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The map above is just plain stupid and is not an accurate reflectioin of what is happening in the United States.
The reality is that the situation is much more complicated then some here would like to belive.
In general I will say immigrants (of non mexican origin) tend to do better because they are more greatful then alot of American born citizens. Children of immigrants have a great pressure on them to do well in the U.S.
That being said Asians tend to excel in academics because most Asians come from cultures that have had a culture and history of education for thousands of years. The same goes for many jews. Much of jewish culture back in the days revolved around study of hebrew and the torah. Being an intellectual was part of growing up.
In the United States many blacks never had the oppurtunity to go to school, let alone go to college.
Lets be honest. KIDS REPLICATE THEIR PARENTS BEHAVIOR!!! The reality is that the current generation of African Americans living in the U.S. are the biproduct of a generation that by and large did not attend higher education.
Bingo! The reason, I keep harping on the generational disparities is because when we think of home school -- that means someone educated has to be home to school the children...
If great great grandmother wasnt allowed to receive a higher education, and therefore was unable to obtain the insight to know the value of an education, thus not imparting the value of education onto great grandmother who was never encouraged by society NOR by family (no homeschooling for her) to seek a REAL education, who then was unable to educate (homeschool) her offspring and/or never emphasized the value of education to grandmother (even as access to more equal education became available). Then how do we all of a sudden expect grandmother to feel inclined or even have the resources to A) send any of her children to a decent school or encourage higher learning B) know the value of an education, when in her day, even WITH an education, the best she was going to do was to get a job as a maid (which is all that was really expected back then) and live just as she saw her peers living.
So when we finally trickle down to 'Mother/Father' -- what makes us think that anyone will have conveyed to them how imperative an education will be...moreover what makes us think that (in considering the lineage from which they came) that they will even have enough of an education to homeschool their now uneducated children?
Homeschooling doesnt start at home...At least one parent either traveled abroad, or attained a formal education.
Of course if formal education was never an integral part of a culture, and for a long period was completely forbidden, how do we expect all of a sudden today for that culture to appreciate, and excel in academics...?
Call this 'playing the race cared' or using slavery as a crutch or whatever. I am BY FAR the last person to blame todays ills entirely on "da white man"...but lets face it, some things are irreversible, and as any historian will tell you, what transpired in the past DOES shape who we are today. And the forced disintegration of -- and the systematic denial of education (particularly EQUAL education) towards minority families are a part of that past that we so often love to gloss over.
Last edited by solytaire; 05-14-2009 at 08:12 PM..
Lets be honest. KIDS REPLICATE THEIR PARENTS BEHAVIOR!!! The reality is that the current generation of African Americans living in the U.S. are the biproduct of a generation that by and large did not attend higher education.
Yes, and where do you think that behavior originates, outer space?
Disposition --> culture --> learned behavior. The problem is, imo, is that we're asking certain cultures to do things they're not ready to do, and may never be ready to do. For example, if you ask a lot of Native Americans who live on reservations, they would have been perfectly happy leading hunter/gather or agrarian lives. They did not want, and still do not want, to be part of this post-industrial society.
I think if other cultures evolved on their own, without any influence from outside sources, they wouldn't have discovered democracy, capitalization, etc. These are concepts and modalities that largely originated from Europe. We're trying to make them fit into a mold that's not right or natural for them. I think that's why most countries can't make democracy work the way the U.S. does (not that we're perfect by any means).
People emigrate to the U.S. because their country sucks. All countries want what we have, electricity that is consistent, running water at all times, freedom to walk in the streets, advanced technology, a stable government, we have no idea how lucky we have it here. The problem is, imo, these other countries want what we have so badly, but they want to keep their ways of thinking and super-transpose all the stuff that we have here on top of their culture. But it doesn't work that way. If you want the goods that capitalism provides, you have buy into capitalistic ideology and behave accordingly, unless you have an abundant resource, like oil, that you can sell to the rest of the world and outsource all of the menial jobs like they do in Saudi Arabia
Compared to us, many countries are failing to keep up. I think the reasons for this is complex, but mostly, I think it's because having a democratized and capitalistic society isn't what they want nor is it right for them. I don't really care how we've taken advantage of them or how they've been subjected, blah blah blah. The truth is, the Jews had no homeland for thousands of years, but they were able to integrate into other societies and carve out a niche for themselves. In America, in the early 1900s and before, the Jews weren't allowed to have jobs that were considered to important or high ranking, like being a lawyer. So they went into the professions where they were accepted, and it's one of the reasons so many Jewish people are in the entertainment industry today. They network. They take care of each other. They didn't sit on their ass and complain that they were discriminated against.
The Japanese are another example. We bombed the **** out of them, the U.S. also helped build them back up, but the U.S. built back up nearly every country it destroyed during WWII, yet the Japanese were the only culture to run so far with it that their technological goods are in sharp competition with our own and as I've stated before, their middle class is at 92%, which is way better than how we're doing here. In addition, before WWII, Japan was affluent and powerful, yet they have one of the smallest areas of land relative to other Asian nations. The islands of Japan are also made out of rock, you can't farm on them. Despite this lack of natural resources, they were and are one of the most formidable forces in Asia.
So you can't sit there and tell me that culture has nothing to do with it, that it's all environment. That's bull****. Instead of trying to make other cultures try to fit into our mold, I think we should be figuring out how best to help them live up to their own potential and develop their society as they see fit. But that will NEVER happen because Americans are so arrogant and well-intentioned, we think it's our duty and obligation to tell other countries how they should be run, and that it's imperative to force our values on other countries for their own good.
In any event, I don't think every high school student in the U.S. needs to learn Shakespeare or Trigonometry. I don't blame them for dropping out. If all I wanted to do was work on cars for a living, I'd drop out, too. imo, what we need to do is set up a formal system where adolescents who want to go to college take the higher learning classes, and the adolescents who want to learn a trade, go to trade school. I know this is done informally in a lot of high schools, but I think we need to regulate it, bring it to the forefront, and start advertising it as an option teenagers can take instead of high school. Right now, the only option is to go to college, or drop out and flip burgers. That can be changed, and needs to be.
Lets be honest. KIDS REPLICATE THEIR PARENTS BEHAVIOR!!! The reality is that the current generation of African Americans living in the U.S. are the biproduct of a generation that by and large did not attend higher education.
I disagree. There are plenty of uneducated immigrants that came to the US and raised children who turned into well educated adults. Maybe what's missing from black and Hispanic families in the US that are doing poorly is that their parents are not pushing their children to excel in the classroom. Their parents are just not teaching their children the importance of getting a good education. They also really need to tell their children to respect and listen to their teachers. And the parents need to get involved with their children's homework. And if those parents are lacking in education, if they get involved with their kid's schoolwork from the early grades, then there is no reason why they can't learn along with their kids all the way up through high school. And the other message they can be telling their children is that they are proof that a lack of education does limit career opportunities.
Maybe some blacks and Hispanics that aren't doing so well in life are just too proud to admit to their kids that had they not dropped out of school and had kids early in life, they'd be farther ahead in life. But maybe it's easier to blame the white man for keeping them down.
If parents don't do their job to inspire their kids to want to learn, then as taxpayers, we are going to be throwing away a lot of good money on trying to improve our school systems in the inner cities. The best teachers in the world can't cure apathetic students.
If the European culture had been allowed to truly evolve on its own, the "western" world at large, would still be very primitive and disease plagued itself..we would all still be in the stone ages.
We would be asking Europeans to excel in nautical exploration when in truth many of their maritime techniques were learned from other cultures...Were it not for some dependency on other cultures, they too may still have been in a realm of vikings....perhaps it was just their disposition, I dont know.
But for sure, Arabs would still be the only people with proficiency in arithmetic and spatial calculations...
I think climate/topographical habitat dictates a peoples' primary culture/culture which then does dictate that groups learned behavior.
Part of the problem is that we DO think "we have it lucky" in this country... we dont have it "Lucky"...we have borrowed, taken,
and discredited the contributions of many other cultures as we claim them as our own ingenuity. This is a young nation, which,
some would say is quickly on the decline...so lets not presume that this nation has it all figured out yet either when
truthfully we are a country of debt and vapid imagery.
People dont care about how this country evolved/took advantage of other nations because it IS easier to sit back and assume we
are just "Lucky" and we are so innovative. Democracy nor capitalism (I think thats what he/she was attempting to say) were
govts/economies discovered by America NOR EUROPE..there is nothing ingenious about the implementation of either of these
things... Many civilizations had made both work successfully.
Furthermore, this country isnt even a true democracy...Im not sure why we keep claiming to be purveyors of democracy when we
dont even operate a true democracy here...We have the same plutocracy as any other nation.
And noting how Jews "stick together & take care of each other" only further illuminates the toll that having African American
families torn apart and destroyed FROM THE OUTSET in this country, has more than underserved and continues to underserve that
demographic..
All countries want what we have because we largely have taken what they had..
It cracks me up how people ask and wonder why this group cant progress or that group isnt progressing quickly enough, yet
quickly become dismissive and indifferent when the infastructure that precipitated that underachievement is cited..lol
Last edited by solytaire; 05-14-2009 at 11:01 PM..
It cracks me up how people ask and wonder why this group cant progress or that group isnt progressing quickly enough, yet
quickly become dismissive and indifferent when the infastructure that precipitated that underachievement is cited..lol
It's because they don't think it's the infrastructures fault and they've given up on the people. If they think the people can't be helped regardless, why try to change the infrastructure?
It's because they don't think it's the infrastructures fault and they've given up on the people. If they think the people can't be helped regardless, why try to change the infrastructure?
Thats always been my opinion: that those who dont acknowledge the framework that molded the state of minorities (specifically the African American demographic) merely dont want to recognize the factors that fostered what we see today among African Americans.
And thats fine with me..truth be told, I wouldnt want to spend all day taking into account the many and sundry historical complexities of the minority demographic myself if I could so easily remove myself from the equation, and impute their negative behavior to their "disposition"...
I honestly wouldnt want to believe the negative aspects of this nation's infrastructure had anything to do with the present composition of our nation either...It feels best to just believe that we all started from the same plane in this country, we (meaning our parents, our grandparents, greatgrandparents, etc.) all had the same opportunities, we each achieved based on our own merit, and that those who have not done so, simply dont have the intangibles that we supreme class of achievers possess.
The only problem with that is that if we arent going to acknowledge the predicating factors that contribute to the current state of Black America...
why then do we pick certain aspects of our history to exalt (the Industrial Revolution, mass printing Press, etc) and acknowledge. And we choose to pay homage to those aspects that begot us our fortunes (Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison)? We acknowledge that without the ingenuity of some individuals, our society as a whole would not be as fortunate or advanced as we are today. We keep the positive aspects of our advancements in their historical contexts. Yet the negative impact that our history has had on minorities, we CHOOSE not to believe that any framework contributed to their current state of being...they were just "predisposed" to their behavior...they are considered to be inherently one way or the other.
Yet everything else is meticulously traced and annotated for its contribution to where we are today as a society...we simply gloss over the role that America, since its inception, has played in the destruction of Black American families, their denial of access to equal education for many generations gone by, and merely make a rather dilettante attempt at answering "why this minority or that minority hasnt progressed at the same rate as everyone else in this country." When there was literally only ONE minority that was denied education (let alone equal education) for MULTIPLE and successive generations...I'd like to see any other ethnicity triumph under those circumstances in this country.
By the way, Im in the same boat as you are to a degree. At this juncture, and with things left to fester as long as they have among minorities, Im not so sure the minority populations are capable of being salvaged by anyone else either. It will have to be an internal turnabout.
Interesting discussion though.
Last edited by solytaire; 05-15-2009 at 12:23 AM..
Yet everything else is meticulously traced and annotated for its contribution to where we are today as a society...we simply gloss over the role that America, since its inception, has played in the destruction of Black American families, their denial of access to equal education for many generations gone by, and merely make a rather dilettante attempt at answering "why this minority or that minority hasnt progressed at the same rate as everyone else in this country." When there was literally only ONE minority that was denied education (let alone equal education) for MULTIPLE and successive generations...I'd like to see any other ethnicity triumph under those circumstances in this country.
I agree with you about the racism and discrimination black people have faced in this country, but Jewish people lost much of their family in the Holocaust and have been discriminated against in the same ways blacks have been, not just here but in other countries as well. My question is this: why is it that many Jewish people have been able to turn things around for them while some blacks have not? If two ethnic groups have suffered in the same ways, what are the ingredients that makes one thrive and the other fall apart?
I agree with you about the racism and discrimination black people have faced in this country, but Jewish people lost much of their family in the Holocaust and have been discriminated against in the same ways blacks have been, not just here but in other countries as well. My question is this: why is it that many Jewish people have been able to turn things around for them while some blacks have not? If two ethnic groups have suffered in the same ways, what are the ingredients that makes one thrive and the other fall apart?
I agree that the racial/religious inequities are unfortunate whether imposed upon blacks, Jews, Indians or white people. I also agree that at some point blacks simply have to move on..But what I dont agree with is the complete decontextualization of the circumstances that African Americans are in..thats my only grievance, but I wholeheartedly agree that the time for excuses (even those excuses that are well warranted) is over.
But I actually had a Jewish coworker of mine describe that disparity to me best.
As he put it "People will dismiss me as a regular caucasian long before they dismiss a person of color as a mainstream American..because I dont have a huge stamp that says Jew on my forehead." I found this to be a bit humorous, and at the same time true. Im not sure of its real significance yet but the mere fact that he feels that at anytime he can merge into the mainstream majority culture, conveyed to me that as a Jew he can (if he so chooses) traverse a less hostile course in his life.
But that notwithstanding, I cant really comment on the Biblical plight of Jews, but if we are paralleling the perils of American Jews or even those who underwent persecution in Nazi Germany, with that of blacks --
Then one discrepancy I see and one that I really think continues to be overlooked, is that Black Americans 1) While both Jews and blacks had families disintegrated, the disintegration of black families was: A) systematic, B) occurred over multiple generations...Jews for the most part can trace much of their lineage. American blacks are truly a culture without a home. Until extremely recently, American blacks could not open up a lockbox and show their children where they came from. They were unable to share with their children the customs of their families (for example. hypothetically -- "This is what us O'Mally men do. Son, the O'Mallys attend Brown University..your great grandfather did, your grandfather did, I did, and so you will)...that actually does matter as it sets a level of familial expectation and establishes an environment of pressure to achieve...
B) Secondly blacks in this country were not only discouraged from education (much less the maths and sciences) but they were left with few other options than to perform in vaudeville minstrel shows (or as we would call it today: BET)...while entertaining, it was also during the emergence of picture shows and mass media distribution in this country. The images of blacks portrayed by this country's media (which blacks did not control) only reiterated what other ethnicities wanted to believe. This, combined with the prevailing logic of the day being "well thats just their disposition" "thats just the way they are" -- (and we need not think that this insular perspective was not overwhelmingly held by CEO's and Politicians of the day, who possessed powers to appoint certain people to positions of authority and prosperity) -- without accounting for the lack of other viable channels of generating revenue for blacks...contributed to a repugnant image that has been the scarlett letter of blacks to this day.
Its similar to the reason women overwhelmingly worked as seamstresses and maids and housekeepers in that day. They took the jobs they were allowed to get. And until the advent of the modern woman that had become the identity of women in general. As most know, a black woman invented the ironing board. Hmmm now why could this be? Perhaps because in her occupation she sought an easier way to press fabrics; most likely as a maid or housekeeper.
Likewise, as blacks attempted to provide for their families and the most streamlined route to do so for blacks of the day was inarguably through entertainment (minstrel shows, self deprecation, athletics etc.) they took and became masters of the skills that would allow them to feed their families. NOT education, accounting, math, etc. So my point is, traditionally in this country as a minority, you get good at what you are allowed to do.
However I havent seen a negative Jewish stereotype in the media...there may be one, but I havent seen it. And its not because foolish Jews dont exist. But they havent had to contend with a long held negative preconception of them whilst trying to assimilate into the mainstream.
Furthermore, blacks were deliberately played against one another (you know, the whole house slave/overseer vs. field slave dynamic) creating turmoil within an already tumultuous experience. which continues to plague
One other thing that I think acts as a partition between the Jewish and the African American experience in this country is the drug culture. During the Harlem Renaissance black intellectualism and civility bridaled that of any other ethnic group. However the induction of heroin and later crack (some propose that the crack epidemic was undoubtedly govt. sponsored, and from what Ive read, I cant say I have much reason to disagree yet) into predominately black communities, thereby creating a culture of dependency on an illegal substance within an already fractured segment of the population, leaves little doubt in my mind personally that these and other factors have contributed to the counterproductivity of the black community.
These are more or less differences in experiences, however I cant explain why these aspects of our society were instituted. But they ARE part of the infrastructure of what we recognize as our society today.
Thats just me tho.
Last edited by solytaire; 05-15-2009 at 01:38 AM..
My question is in every city in America the worst area and most poor area is Black and the second most poor or dangerous is Hispanic but how and why have Asians bucked this minority trend? Go to the casino in Milwaukee and the high roller tables and rooms are all full of Asians and all engineering/math classes in college are either Indian or Asian. I suppose things are different in LA and SF but in Milwaukee we have a low Asian population but a high black and Hispanic population we have around 50-60,000 Asians. All our Asians for the most part are well educated well mannered and clean orderly people. Even the blue collar Asians have very nice homes and nice yards and you never see a Asian homeless guy in Milwaukee or anywhere else that I have seen. Milwaukee averages around 115-130 homicides even though last year we only had 70, not one Asian was killed or arrested for a homicide.
So if Asians were brought here by the white man to build the railroads and Hispanics immigrated here and blacks were brought here by slavery and all three ethnicity's started from the bottom why haven't Asians fallen into the "trap" that some claim that the man is holding them back and it's a white man's world...well the Asians have progressed and other ethnic backgrounds haven't why? I have seen many poor Asians that take such good care of there house and cars even thought they only make very little money and they are very polite people.
Another thing, I have talked to many immigrant Africans who don't like American black people b/c of the way they act and conduct themselves and I have been asked by people from Africa why are American blacks so violent in America? I have been told by many immigrants from Africa that say "they should be so happy just to be in America they have no reason to be mad and depressed"
So how have Asians Americans advanced and progressed and blacks and Hispanics not ? I'm talking as a whole society. You don't see Asian hoods in every city or Indian thugs on every corner in the hood.
Hispanic is not a race. Hispanics could be Eurowhite, Brown, Black, Indian, Arab, or Asian.
However I havent seen a negative Jewish stereotype in the media...there may be one, but I havent seen it. And its not because foolish Jews dont exist. But they havent had to contend with a long held negative preconception of them whilst trying to assimilate into the mainstream.
Mostly in the South, and actually once in RI in a rural area, have I heard the term Jew used as a verb... as in, "can I Jew you down?" And that's coming presumably from white christians. And the negative Jewish stereotype type in the media is a Jew being a Shylock, being cheap, also lending money at an unseemly high interest rate, having a big nose with a crook in it. Living in a metro Northeast region of the US, there is a large population of Jewish people, and one doesn't usually see any overt anti-Semitism. However, in areas where there aren't as many Jews like the South, no one thinks anything of using the term Jew as a verb.
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