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3. There are many social reform groups that in my opinion harm these groups than help them. They seem to have this victimization agenda and they keep feeding it to blacks, hispanic, and women and it is spreading to whites also. To me they keep making these groups feel the government and society owes them for being victims. In general many seem to accept government social programs and stay at the lowest economic level.
I think this is really something that should be emphasized in this thread again. Great Post, ElAmigo, reps to you
IMO, this is the key answer to the OP's question. The main difference between the Blacks/Hispanics and the other minorities is the victimization mentality and the sense of entitlement that is bred among these cultures in the decades past. Many posters here brought up very good points and I agree with most of them and the explanations on both sides of the arguments are very valid. All the arguments brought up to explain why Blacks and Hispanics don't succeed as much as other minorities are definitely valid and are a part of the reason. But the main difference here is difference in mentality that exists in the culture towards what's required to succeed and belief in one's chances to succeed. Part of achieving success is believing in yourself and IMO, part of that belief was taken away by our society's attitude towards these ethnic groups. Up to these days Blacks and Hispanics ARE discriminated against by the negative stereotypes while Asians and Indians are glorified especially in professional high paying fields like medicine, computer science, engineering, etc. Just pretend that you are a hiring manager for a well paid professional job, let's say in IT and you are interviewing a white candidate, an Asian candidate, an Indian candidate, a Black candidate and a Hispanic. Even if you are the kind of person to look beyond stereotypes can you help assuming who of the pack you'd consider the smartest and the hardest working candidate before you even have them utter a single word and before taking a close look at any of their resumes? Blacks and Hispanics in certain professional fields are still regarded as 'tokens', few and far between unless you go to a geographic area where Blacks and Hispanics are a physical majority of the population like Atlanta and Miami.
I have a Hispanic friend from Mexico who happens to have a German last name. He looks Hispanic and he speaks Spanish fluently, he came to the US as a little boy and his English is perfect. He received a good education and he works in a very high paying job. Part of his success, he says himself is having a 'right' last name. He believes even now after achieving all that he has achieved on his own that part of his success is being lucky to be able to relate and blend into the white culture that his last name has afforded him. He doesn't believe that he might have been in the same place if he had a Spanish last name. Victim mentality?
Now let's analyze a little closer how different immigrant groups came to be in the US. Every group except Blacks and Hispanics came to the US in search of good life voluntarily, regardless of whether they were discriminated against upon arrival, none of these groups would have a thought that they were entitled to something on par with the then 'majority'. Immigrants came accepting that they had to start at the bottom and work their way up. This is common for all immigrant groups, be it Italians, Irish, Jews, Asians, Indians, etc. They passed this mentality onto their future generations, encouraging them to work harder, look for ways out, emphasizing education and entrepreneurship as a shortcut to better life and higher paying jobs as opposed to performing menial low paying jobs like the earlier generations. Like some other posters already pointed out many immigrant children were taught to be more competitive than their 'majority' counterparts to stand out.
Blacks and Hispanics simply have very different origins in this country. Blacks were brought in against their will as slaves, of course we have already discussed this in great detail, no need to repeat. In the recent decades there has been a movement to try to 'make up' for this injustice. It was quite an effort to make sure that Blacks feel entitled to the same things as the 'majority' in the our society. This bred the sense of entitlement that was quite different from the acceptance of feeling of temporary inferiority and desire to start from the bottom and hope to achieve experienced by most voluntary immigrants. Entitlement of course gives you nothing, when you achieve nothing, when you believe you have been victimized you get angry. Anger breeds crime.
Hispanics history is a bit more complex and different. I am not an expert and I am not going to claim that this is THE REASON. I'll say instead that this is just more of a 'contributing factor' than a real reason. Hispanics have lived on this continent, shared the same land with the English speaking majority for centuries. Many areas of the US used to belong to Spain and then Mexico, these people lived in some parts of the US for many generations going back further into the history and maintaining their old culture. A part of these people would feel entitled just like the 'majority' and not see themselves in the same situation as the voluntary immigrants who sailed the seas to come to the US. borders are not clear cuts across cultures, they won't keep cultures separated. Hispanics are our neighbors, they share the same land, they have similar history of being descendants of European settlers with us and they do have higher sense of entitlement than the 'fresh of the boat' immigrants from distant lands. To make the matters worse Hispanics are often treated in the same way as Blacks as far as 'injustice' and discrimination reparations are concerned. Hispanics didn't necessarily get the same treatment as Blacks and it seems that in Hispanic culture receiving government assistance is somewhat shameful and it's preferred to be a working poor as opposed to living off welfare. I think ElAmigo had summarized pretty well the points about Hispanic culture where hard work and nuclear family may be valued over the 'getting smart ways' to succeed. Remember, becoming a success is not always about working hard but about working smart and sometimes finding the little 'shortcuts'. Hispanic culture has no shortage of glorifying hard work, so this is not the problem here. It is underestimating the value of education and sacrifices to education. Education is a 'shortcut' to success, education is not necessarily the 'hard' work as much as it is 'smart' work.
We have decades of breeding the mentality into certain segments of people that receiving government assistance and living off of it for the rest of your life is ok, whereas it's considered shameful among most immigrants. Coming to US, my family was on welfare assistance for several months, we also received foodstamps. Needless to say, I was ashamed when I had to go to the grocery store to pay in foodstamps. I was happy when I was able to stop relying on welfare and got a steady job even though my lifestyle hasn't really improved. We had a mentality that living off of government assistance was the lowest form of existence and was something of last resort and meant desperation. After all we didn't come all the way across the world FOR THAT. Many poor whites and blacks living on this continent for generations would have a different mentality towards the assistance and what it takes to succeed. It's all a perspective and it's the result of the culture.
I also don't believe that this cultural differences are set in stone. The winds are changing and more and more Blacks and Hispanics now see more and more positive role models and eventually we will kill the negative stereotypes and Blacks and Hispanics would no longer be 'tokens' in the fields requiring education and would no longer be the majority in the service industry and on low paying jobs. It will take time and maybe even a generation of two but I am pretty confident that it will happen.
As most know, a black woman invented the ironing board.
This was a misstatement by me: *Edit* A black woman did not invent the ironing board but the improvements that she made on preexisting models were more than substantive...
I agree with your points but I a lot of the problems among inner city blacks are largely the result of the crack epidemic of the 80's and 90's. The violence associated with crack, the guns, the addiction, the record number of young men incarcerated, the breakup of families and communities and the culture which developed out of all that is what explains why the inner city is so undeveloped.
Incarceration and gentrification is not the answer. I think with the administrations' new drug and urban czars along with the selection of Van Jones for developing green collar jobs, the move to expand internet access, this country can finally remove this blemish on our society.
I agree and I'd add to that the popularity of that dreadful gangsta rap music as inspiring the black youth to emulate those "music" stars in speech patterns, dress code and other poor behaviour.
I can understand Americans of African descent being hindered by Jim Crow laws and the crack epidemic, as the latter is something that happened very recently, and I am pleased to see that African Americans have advanced into the middle class quite steadily since then.
All too often, however, I hear about the lingering effects of slavery on African Americans, and that is why they are having trouble entering the middle class. Jesse Jackson always talks about 'The legacy of Slavery' that effects African Americans, but the truth is that the legacy of slavery is something that all Americans have.
Whether you want to believe or not, EVERY single person living in this country as ancestors that were slaves. Some more recent that others.
Ever heard of Serfdom??? The institution of peasant slavery that existed in Western Europe until the 18th century and wasn't abolished in Eastern Europe until the 19th century? According to the 1860 census, there were 4 million slaves in America. According to Russia's 1857 census there were 23 million serfs (slaves) in Russia! Every single white person in America and Europe has an ancestor (actually, has hundreds of ancestors) who were slaves.
I won't even get into slavery in Asia and Africa, which still continues today.
The bottom line, is that every person in this country has ancestors who were slaves. Many of the European immigrants that came from central europe (like Germany) to America were recent descendants of Surfs and they had no money. Those were my ancestors.
I don't look back at my ancestors poverty and slavery and let it bring me down. I don't think that African Americans should either.
I agree and I'd add to that the popularity of that dreadful gangsta rap music as inspiring the black youth to emulate those "music" stars in speech patterns, dress code and other poor behaviour.
There are good examples of African Americans out there other than the Obamas. There is a relatively young African American man by the name of Van Jones. He wrote a book called the green collar economy. I have not got the book yet but I saw a very interesting interview with him on Larry King.
His book is supposed to have strategies on how to produce green jobs that jumpstart our economy but also can help lift the poor out of poverty. Even more interesting is this young man has joined the Obama adminstration recently. Since he's not a famous rapper, basketball player or gang banger I doubt he'll get much media attention but nonetheless, he's someone to keep an eye on. Can't wait to get my hands on his book!
There are 40somethingmillion Hispanics in America, and 30somethingmillion blacks in America. The Blacks are descendants of slaves brought here against their will. The Hispanics are comprised in a large part by illegal immigrants, natives on land taken over by Americans, and legal immigrants.
Asians only became a large percentage of the population fairly recently relative to other peoples, and the vast majority of Asians are here through legal immigration.
In Australia and Britain, which each have large Asian minorities, they aren't quite the "model minority" they are here.
I think this is really something that should be emphasized in this thread again. Great Post, ElAmigo, reps to you
IMO, this is the key answer to the OP's question. The main difference between the Blacks/Hispanics and the other minorities is the victimization mentality and the sense of entitlement that is bred among these cultures in the decades past. Many posters here brought up very good points and I agree with most of them and the explanations on both sides of the arguments are very valid. All the arguments brought up to explain why Blacks and Hispanics don't succeed as much as other minorities are definitely valid and are a part of the reason. But the main difference here is difference in mentality that exists in the culture towards what's required to succeed and belief in one's chances to succeed. Part of achieving success is believing in yourself and IMO, part of that belief was taken away by our society's attitude towards these ethnic groups. Up to these days Blacks and Hispanics ARE discriminated against by the negative stereotypes while Asians and Indians are glorified especially in professional high paying fields like medicine, computer science, engineering, etc. Just pretend that you are a hiring manager for a well paid professional job, let's say in IT and you are interviewing a white candidate, an Asian candidate, an Indian candidate, a Black candidate and a Hispanic. Even if you are the kind of person to look beyond stereotypes can you help assuming who of the pack you'd consider the smartest and the hardest working candidate before you even have them utter a single word and before taking a close look at any of their resumes? Blacks and Hispanics in certain professional fields are still regarded as 'tokens', few and far between unless you go to a geographic area where Blacks and Hispanics are a physical majority of the population like Atlanta and Miami.
I have a Hispanic friend from Mexico who happens to have a German last name. He looks Hispanic and he speaks Spanish fluently, he came to the US as a little boy and his English is perfect. He received a good education and he works in a very high paying job. Part of his success, he says himself is having a 'right' last name. He believes even now after achieving all that he has achieved on his own that part of his success is being lucky to be able to relate and blend into the white culture that his last name has afforded him. He doesn't believe that he might have been in the same place if he had a Spanish last name. Victim mentality?
Now let's analyze a little closer how different immigrant groups came to be in the US. Every group except Blacks and Hispanics came to the US in search of good life voluntarily, regardless of whether they were discriminated against upon arrival, none of these groups would have a thought that they were entitled to something on par with the then 'majority'. Immigrants came accepting that they had to start at the bottom and work their way up. This is common for all immigrant groups, be it Italians, Irish, Jews, Asians, Indians, etc. They passed this mentality onto their future generations, encouraging them to work harder, look for ways out, emphasizing education and entrepreneurship as a shortcut to better life and higher paying jobs as opposed to performing menial low paying jobs like the earlier generations. Like some other posters already pointed out many immigrant children were taught to be more competitive than their 'majority' counterparts to stand out.
Blacks and Hispanics simply have very different origins in this country. Blacks were brought in against their will as slaves, of course we have already discussed this in great detail, no need to repeat. In the recent decades there has been a movement to try to 'make up' for this injustice. It was quite an effort to make sure that Blacks feel entitled to the same things as the 'majority' in the our society. This bred the sense of entitlement that was quite different from the acceptance of feeling of temporary inferiority and desire to start from the bottom and hope to achieve experienced by most voluntary immigrants. Entitlement of course gives you nothing, when you achieve nothing, when you believe you have been victimized you get angry. Anger breeds crime.
Hispanics history is a bit more complex and different. I am not an expert and I am not going to claim that this is THE REASON. I'll say instead that this is just more of a 'contributing factor' than a real reason. Hispanics have lived on this continent, shared the same land with the English speaking majority for centuries. Many areas of the US used to belong to Spain and then Mexico, these people lived in some parts of the US for many generations going back further into the history and maintaining their old culture. A part of these people would feel entitled just like the 'majority' and not see themselves in the same situation as the voluntary immigrants who sailed the seas to come to the US. borders are not clear cuts across cultures, they won't keep cultures separated. Hispanics are our neighbors, they share the same land, they have similar history of being descendants of European settlers with us and they do have higher sense of entitlement than the 'fresh of the boat' immigrants from distant lands. To make the matters worse Hispanics are often treated in the same way as Blacks as far as 'injustice' and discrimination reparations are concerned. Hispanics didn't necessarily get the same treatment as Blacks and it seems that in Hispanic culture receiving government assistance is somewhat shameful and it's preferred to be a working poor as opposed to living off welfare. I think ElAmigo had summarized pretty well the points about Hispanic culture where hard work and nuclear family may be valued over the 'getting smart ways' to succeed. Remember, becoming a success is not always about working hard but about working smart and sometimes finding the little 'shortcuts'. Hispanic culture has no shortage of glorifying hard work, so this is not the problem here. It is underestimating the value of education and sacrifices to education. Education is a 'shortcut' to success, education is not necessarily the 'hard' work as much as it is 'smart' work.
We have decades of breeding the mentality into certain segments of people that receiving government assistance and living off of it for the rest of your life is ok, whereas it's considered shameful among most immigrants. Coming to US, my family was on welfare assistance for several months, we also received foodstamps. Needless to say, I was ashamed when I had to go to the grocery store to pay in foodstamps. I was happy when I was able to stop relying on welfare and got a steady job even though my lifestyle hasn't really improved. We had a mentality that living off of government assistance was the lowest form of existence and was something of last resort and meant desperation. After all we didn't come all the way across the world FOR THAT. Many poor whites and blacks living on this continent for generations would have a different mentality towards the assistance and what it takes to succeed. It's all a perspective and it's the result of the culture.
I also don't believe that this cultural differences are set in stone. The winds are changing and more and more Blacks and Hispanics now see more and more positive role models and eventually we will kill the negative stereotypes and Blacks and Hispanics would no longer be 'tokens' in the fields requiring education and would no longer be the majority in the service industry and on low paying jobs. It will take time and maybe even a generation of two but I am pretty confident that it will happen.
I made my post before reading this one, much more thorough and comprehensive.
No one has ever stopped black people from home schooling their children. And how do you explain the extraordinary accomplishments of Booker T. Washington? And Sydney Poitier's parents sold tomatoes and gravel in the Bahamas and he turned out to be a very fine and well spoken man. And there are plenty of books in public libraries. There are used book stores with cheap books for just a few dollars. My mother read wonderful books to us like Charlotte's Web and The Hobbit when we were kids. Not every teacher I had was that great a teacher, but what helped was having fellow classmates that were also interested in going to college.
I think that anyone who is a parent, planned or unplanned, has to step up the plate and be a good parent, no matter what their economic status is. Almost every family in the US currently has both parents working. My parents both worked over 40 hours a week when I was young, and we turned out fine. Parents are the ones that have to instill in their children a desire to learn and have a productive life. No one else can do that for them. Parents have a much greater influence on their children than their teachers. And the desire to learn shouldn't stop once someone graduates and leaves the classroom. At the age of almost 29, my boyfriend is still learning about new subjects like electric car tachnology and programming motherboard chips. This he does all on his own and outside a classroom. The internet is really a great and free resource. I didn't learn about collecting and dealing in antiques until later in life. But I really enjoy learning more about them, studying the market for them and it's really quite a lucrative job skill to have.
Otherwise, over the last 30 years, I've worked with recent immigrants from Haiti, Sudan and in Asia in restaurants and the major hotels. They were all hard workers and willing to work overtime or a second job. They didn't throw their money away on bling, frivolities or leasing fancy cars. Many lived in crowded conditions. Many were sending part of the paychecks back to family in their home countries. Others were saving to buy real estate or to start their own business. No one was concerned about being accepted by white people, or caring what white people thought of them, or if other races were willing to date them. They were only focused on their goal of bettering themselves and their loved ones. None of these people felt they were owed anything by anyone else. They know that it's on them to succeed in life. They appreciated the opportunities that were in the US.
Crappy things have happened to every race and culture. And the best way to deal with it is just to move forward. One of the worst things the US has down to any group were the atomic bombs they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Living with the aftermath must have been really horrendous. I never hear the Japanese complaining about that nor the internment camps of WWII.
i wish you wouldn't sound so preachy. i know american culture can be annoying in a lot of ways but the way you just focus on african americans is ridiculous and laughable considering the number of degenerates that exist in every race and group. i've seen plenty of degenerate asians who are like whores who married gi's and come to america, lots of them exist around military bases. their are embarassing people in every group. or do you think morons don't exist in upper classes as well? LOL. is dollars and cents your sole criteria of a good human being? if you've worked with many people then you would know better or maybe you are blind.
southeast asia is a lot poorer than northeast asia for example.
african americans were brought over as slaves and not of their choice, no other group has that history in america. it's like comparing apples and oranges when you compare other minorities with same expectations.
that said, i don't have anymore sympathy for african americans or any minority here including whites because i know there are good and bad people in all of them. african americans can be just as racist and ugly not only to whites but other minorities and same goes for other races including just other bad character flaws. seeing everyone through some 'poor you' sacred lens as well as 'you are superior' is a big mistake. every group has "talents" but i rate people as human beings. i certainly don't like someone because what's in their bank account nor can i like someone who's a jerk no matter what their socioeconomic situation or background is or was..
I can understand Americans of African descent being hindered by Jim Crow laws and the crack epidemic, as the latter is something that happened very recently, and I am pleased to see that African Americans have advanced into the middle class quite steadily since then.
All too often, however, I hear about the lingering effects of slavery on African Americans, and that is why they are having trouble entering the middle class. Jesse Jackson always talks about 'The legacy of Slavery' that effects African Americans, but the truth is that the legacy of slavery is something that all Americans have.
Whether you want to believe or not, EVERY single person living in this country as ancestors that were slaves. Some more recent that others.
Ever heard of Serfdom??? The institution of peasant slavery that existed in Western Europe until the 18th century and wasn't abolished in Eastern Europe until the 19th century? According to the 1860 census, there were 4 million slaves in America. According to Russia's 1857 census there were 23 million serfs (slaves) in Russia! Every single white person in America and Europe has an ancestor (actually, has hundreds of ancestors) who were slaves.
I won't even get into slavery in Asia and Africa, which still continues today.
The bottom line, is that every person in this country has ancestors who were slaves. Many of the European immigrants that came from central europe (like Germany) to America were recent descendants of Surfs and they had no money. Those were my ancestors.
I don't look back at my ancestors poverty and slavery and let it bring me down. I don't think that African Americans should either.
You do realize the Roman empire fell thousands of years ago right? The ramifications of roman slavery lasted for hundreds of years. The people living in Gaul and Germania took centuries to recover from Roman oppression. YES I SAID CENTURIES TO RECOVER from Roman oppression.
Some of the greatest slaughters in history occured under the rule of men such as Julius Ceaser and Augustus. The human suffering brought by Roman rulers in foreign lands makes todays sufferings seem like childs play.
I think people today tend to forget that everything that will happen has already happend. There is nothing new under the sun. The same thing African Americans are going through has already been gone through by countless ethnic groups throughout history.
Segregation was less then a generation ago!!! It will take a few generations before things return to "normal" for blacks. We should be happy a person like Obama was elected, it shows how much different attitudes among blacks and whites has changed in this past 30-40 years.
In other words DONT JUDGE
P.S. More Americans need to study history.
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