Snowflakes in action: the actual reality of "snowflakes" in the world and the consequences

[Toni]

You're talking about Asians coming here on H1-B visas. I'm talking about the ones brought here for the railroad work etc. They started out the same as the ex-slave blacks.

Yes, precisely the same.
IGNORING 400 YEARS OF ENSLAVEMENT BY AND WITHIN THE AMERICAN CULTURE.
The lingering cultural effect is called racism. Except by snowflakes who would like to avoid confronting any complicity in the plight of oppressed minorities...
Yes, we are ALL complicit, even the victims.

It would seem that epitome of racism to assume that Black people are incapable of achievement because of events that long preceded their birth. But that's the progressive ideology, I guess.

If only racism died with the Emancipation Proclamation and formerly enslaved people were welcomed as full citizens with all the rights and privileges afforded white citizens, you’d have a point.

Instead you keep posting and disproving that point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, leftists appear to believe that. Rightists appear to believe it happens a fair amount. Both sides have an axe to grind; I'm not impressed by either side's objectivity on this point. But I don't think it's a coincidence that this controversy blew up at the same time as the Covid epidemic. For the first time, children were getting lessons by Zoom, so for the first time, parents were hearing at first hand what teachers were telling their children. Something ticked them off about it. And if what they were ticked off about was history being taught objectively and factually and SB 148 was intended to put a stop to that, then the legislators wouldn't have put in a clause specifically saying objective and factual teaching of history doesn't qualify as discrimination.

We have two huge triggers for this:

1) The rise of Trumpism.

You have made it abundantly clear, in post after post over a long period of time, that among the things you are consistently opposed to are (1) affirmative action, which you've called "racism", and (2) Donald Trump, whom you've called names unprintable in polite company. Clearly therefore, you are thoroughly aware that people are able to simultaneously oppose both racial discrimination in all forms including affirmative action, and Trump. Why, then, do you regard attempts to stop schools from teaching children to believe a heap of racially discriminatory ideology, in particular the opinion that affirmative action is a good thing and people of some races ought to be racially discriminated against, as an exercise in "Trumpism"?

While it's possible to be opposed to racial discrimination in both directions the Trumpets are generally for racial discrimination.

2) SB8.

While I would consider other factors these are plenty adequate to explain this crap.

Okay, let's talk about SB8. SB8 is an attempt to achieve the Texas legislature's illegal objective by weaponizing anti-abortion private citizens. In order to do that, the lawyers who drew up SB8 understood that they needed to create "standing" -- they needed a clause in their law that specifically authorized private citizens to sue people for enabling abortions, so a court wouldn't react to some random yahoo complaining her neighbor drove his girlfriend to her abortion with "What's it to you?". Your contention is that SB148 is trying to do likewise: trying to achieve the Florida legislators' objective -- you said "Having a chilling effect on education is the intent of the law, not a fear." -- by weaponizing Trumpists or whoever to take schools to court over teaching such as your example, "it could make a racist uncomfortable and thus be close enough to the line that teachers would be afraid to do it."

Well, if that were their purpose, don't you think the Florida legislators would have taken care to include in SB148 a clause like the one in SB8, that makes making a racist uncomfortable actionable? In point of fact, they appear to have taken care not to do that. Can you point out anywhere in SB148 that gives anyone "standing" to sue over hurt feelings?

SB148 doesn't go as far as SB8, but it still is using the threat of being sued as a weapon. There's just not the financial benefit from doing so.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, let's accept that dads matter a lot for now, but we must then allow that they matter a lot, regardless of the child's or a single mother's ethnicity. So, let's look at the trend of all nonmarital births in the US and see if we can match it up against the trend of all violent crimes.

There is no correlation. Whoops.

Yup, because it's measuring the wrong thing.

Kids fare a lot better with two adults in a stable relationship than when they're with only one adult.

Whether those two adults are married to each other or not is irrelevant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dads matter. A lot.

Percentage of children under age eighteen in families living in poverty, by child’s race/ethnicity and family structure, 2017

COE - Characteristics of Children’s Families

nces.ed.gov

Except it isn't "Dads" per se, but having two people in parental roles in the household.

 

[Hermit]

Fine. So, where is the correlation between unmarried births and crime?

Not making that correlation. Just that children of single-parent households fair worse on life metrics, generally, than their married-household peers.

I agree that children of single-parent households fare worse on life metrics, generally, than their married-household peers, but if single parent households were the dominant determinant of crime rates, this should create a corelation between the rate of single-parent children and crimes. don't you think?

Having noted Metaphor's remark that children in single-mother households are only a subset of children of nonmarital birth at best, I looked for data specifically concerning the former and found a spreadsheet (Table CH-1) on this page of the United States Census Bureau. Unfortunately, those data cover fewer years than the information I found elsewhere, but one can only work with what comes to hand.

This is how the data graph out.

It's a bit rough. A longer timeline would have been preferable and the number of children has not been adjusted for population growth, but even if it had, the clear lack of correlation between the ratio of children in single-mother households and crime rates would have remained.

The disproportionately high offender rate in the Black community is nonetheless significant when comparing group disparities.

Yes, but again, if a lack of fatherly guidance and discipline is a dominant cause of increasing crime among blacks, an increase in the general population's number of children in single-mother households should equally result in a concomitant increase in crime across the board. It's not happening.

 

[TomC]

Yes, but again, if a lack of fatherly guidance and discipline is a dominant cause of increasing crime among blacks, an increase in the general population's number of children in single-mother households should equally result in a concomitant increase in crime across the board. It's not happening.

But there are just too many variables to draw simplistic correlations like that.

For example, more working mothers means more kids are raised, to a larger degree, by media and child care employees and peers and school. In other words, people who are raising you for money not love. I don't believe that's working out well for society as a whole. But how do you factor that into crime rates?
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

'Paper terrorism': Parents against mask mandates bombard school districts with sham legal claims

A group called Bonds for the Win is organizing parents to file claims against school districts’ insurance policies, taking a page from the sovereign citizen playbook.

www.nbcnews.com

Jill Griffin had a panic on her hands.

Teachers and staff members of her school district in Bethalto, Illinois, a small town outside of St. Louis, were suddenly worried that they would not be paid. They had seen videos posted online in which a parent who objected to the district’s Covid mask mandate said that she had filed a claim against the district’s insurance, causing the schools to lose all federal funding.


Griffin, the Bethalto schools superintendent, has spent weeks dealing with the fallout.

“You have district officials who are spending time on things like this, rather than on what we need to be spending time on — making sure that our classrooms are covered right now in the middle of a pandemic,” Griffin said.

The parent’s claims were baseless. She had no ability to use the mask mandate to file a claim against the district’s insurance policy, or affect its federal funding in any way.

But the scare tactic has become a familiar one. A growing number of school districts across the country are facing similar challenges from parent activists who have adopted strategies and language that are well known to law enforcement and extremism experts who deal with far-right “sovereign citizen” groups in the U.S. The Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League call it “paper terrorism.”

The parents’ strategy is simple: Try to use obscure and often inapplicable legal claims to force a school district to make a policy change. And while the claims have no legal standing, they have been effective at spreading confusion and wasting school districts’ resources, even though the paperwork doesn’t require a formal legal response.

 

[Trausti]

Yes, but again, if a lack of fatherly guidance and discipline is a dominant cause of increasing crime among blacks, an increase in the general population's number of children in single-mother households should equally result in a concomitant increase in crime across the board. It's not happening.

Don’t know that lack of fathers is the “dominant” cause of the high Black crime rate; but we seem to agree that it’s a big hurdle for any child growing up. But the high Black crime rate is probably a big factor in the group disparities; though it’s politically incorrect to notice that.

 

[Gospel]

But the high Black crime rate is probably a big factor in the group disparities; though it’s politically incorrect to notice that.

Oh, so now grassroots movements don't exist in the black community. You're really making it hard for me not to think you're out of touch.

Edit: What I mean by this (since you probably don't get it) is black people have been fighting amongst each other about the issues in our community for two centuries. We aren't afraid to talk about it. We only find issues with people (like yourself) who use it as a tool to make it more difficult for us.

 

[Trausti]

But the high Black crime rate is probably a big factor in the group disparities; though it’s politically incorrect to notice that.

Oh, so now grassroots movements don't exist in the black community. You're really making it hard for me not to think you're out of touch.

Oh, no. I know they exist. Church ladies and such. No doubt most in the Black community wish the knuckleheads would knock it off.

Dads spend time in Louisiana high school after 23 students were arrested in string of violence

After a violent week of fighting in school at Southwood High School, a group of dads decided to take matters into their own hands.

www.cbsnews.com

But these good folks get little media attention (they’re not the defund the police crowd). And even if they did, how do you stop Tyrone from shooting Deshawn for disrespecting him? Point is that high crime rates likely play a key role in group disparities.

 

[Gospel]

But these good folks get little media attention (they’re not the defund the police crowd).

Understood & I agree to an extent. The extent is that some grassroots organizations are indeed set up solely to exploit the black community. This much is true.

Edit: I also retract the "you probably don't get it". I appreciate you actually recognize that there is a part of the black community working on the issues of crime, poverty, education, and most importantly the family structure. It's not easy.

 

[Swammerdami]

The empirical fact is that right now the mean amount of wealth of Afro-American households amounts to one tenth of the wealth of non-Hispanic White households. I said nothing about the mean amount of wealth of Asian-American households for the simple reason that I could not find the relevant data. You have not provided any either, so I really don't know on what basis you claim that Asian immigrants show that generational inherited wealth does not matter.

Dude, how many people do you think get a sizable inheritance, if any at all? And how many people are able to keep that wealth without frittering it away before the next generation? Put it to bed, man.

Even ignoring inheritances, the well-off can afford better education and other opportunities for their children. If this is not a major reason for on-gong race-wealth correlations, what do you think is?

But your comment about (lack of) sizable inheritances helps confirm my belief that wealth inequality is underestimated by many who haven't looked at the data. I will summarize the numbers in Figure 11.11 of Piketty's Capital. I think these numbers are for France; the U.S.A. numbers might be similar or even more pronounced.

The statistic in Figure 11.11 is the fraction of a (birth-year) cohort who inherit more than the median life-time labor earnings (of that cohort?). (That median would be about $1 million I think, surely "sizable.")

Cohort born in 1810 — 10%
Cohort born in 18ึ70 — 8%
Cohort born in 1900 — 2%
Cohort born in 1920 — 2%
Cohort born in 1950 — 5%
Cohort born in 1970 — 12%
Cohort born in 2020 — 15% (predicted)

 

[Elixir]

People who have learned how to make money from the example of their parents have a very good chance of living above the poverty line, regardless of inheritance.
Even if the parents, grandparents and great grandparents worked at menial jobs, they succeeded in raising kids within the economic system. The were instilled with a work/reward ethic that enables their self sufficiency.
A slave, raised as a slave, doesn’t have that conditioning and neither will their kids or their kid’ kids. And that will continue for as long as the population consisting of descendents of slaves is living in segregation or partial segregation from the mainstream of the socio-economic engine. Change is super slow, happens in fits and starts and regression is always possible because people are mean, jealous and fearful of one another. I hope and believe (tentatively) that over timescales of centuries, humans get kinder and gentler. Shorter term… doesn’t look too good.

 

[Trausti]

Even ignoring inheritances, the well-off can afford better education and other opportunities for their children. If this is not a major reason for on-gong race-wealth correlations, what do you think is?

Inheritance of cognitive and behavioral traits are more impactful than any monetary inheritance. My favorite example of this, don’t have the cite on hand, is that the majority of the Chinese Communist Party politburo members are descendants of pre-revolution nobility / gentry. The ripples of the ancient civil service exam are still felt today.

 

[Trausti]

A slave, raised as a slave, doesn’t have that conditioning and neither will their kids or their kid’ kids.

How can anyone believe this? St.Patrick had been a slave. Fredrick Douglas was a born into slavery. That you need to be conditioned to be a parent, good grief.

 

[Trausti]

Even ignoring inheritances, the well-off can afford better education and other opportunities for their children. If this is not a major reason for on-gong race-wealth correlations, what do you think is?

Inheritance of cognitive and behavioral traits are more impactful than any monetary inheritance. My favorite example of this, don’t have the cite on hand, is that the majority of the Chinese Communist Party politburo members are descendants of pre-revolution nobility / gentry. The ripples of the ancient civil service exam are still felt today.

This doesn’t deal directly with CCP members, but essentially the same example.

Persistence Despite Revolutions

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

www.nber.org

Can efforts to eradicate inequality in wealth and education eliminate intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status? The Chinese Communist Revolution and Cultural Revolution aimed to do exactly that. Using newly digitized archival records and contemporary census and household survey data, we show that the revolutions were effective in homogenizing the population economically in the short run. However, the pattern of inequality that characterized the pre-revolution generation re-emerges today. Almost half a century after the revolutions, individuals whose grandparents belonged to the pre-revolution elite earn 16 percent more income and have completed more than 11 percent additional years of schooling than those from non-elite households. We find evidence that human capital (such as knowledge, skills, and values) has been transmitted within the families, and the social capital embodied in kinship networks has survived the revolutions. These channels allow the pre-revolution elite to rebound after the revolutions, and their socioeconomic status persists despite one of the most aggressive attempts to eliminate differences in the population.

 

[Hermit]

Yes, but again, if a lack of fatherly guidance and discipline is a dominant cause of increasing crime among blacks, an increase in the general population's number of children in single-mother households should equally result in a concomitant increase in crime across the board. It's not happening.

Don’t know that lack of fathers is the “dominant” cause of the high Black crime rate; but we seem to agree that it’s a big hurdle for any child growing up. But the high Black crime rate is probably a big factor in the group disparities; though it’s politically incorrect to notice that.

You did attempt to explain the difference of crime rates between blacks and non-blacks in terms of single-mother households here and here. You also tried to bolster your claim by falsely asserting that "Before the 1960's, the White/Black marriage rate was the same". (Before the 1960s the difference was actually a multiple compared to now.)

I have countered that if the incidence of of single-mother households causes an increase in crimes perpetrated by blacks we must expect to see the same effect in the US population at large. We obviously don't. What we see is a number of years (1983- 1991) during which crime rates as well as the number of single-mother households increased, followed by years (1992-2014) in which crime rates dropped significantly (just about halved) despite the continued steady rise in the number of single-mother households. Dads do matter. A lot less than you think. Try to come up with other causes of the high Black crime rate. If you manage to do that without allowing past and present racism as a dominant factor you'll get bonus points who don't think it is because, you know, Asians.

 

[Trausti]

Try to come up with other causes of the high Black crime rate. If you manage to do that without allowing past and present racism as a dominant factor you'll get bonus points who don't think it is because, you know, Asians.

Explain how past racism causes young Black men to gun down other young Black men in large numbers. Also explain why young Black men commit disproportionate rates of violent crime in Canada and the UK. And Alaska.

 

[Toni]

Try to come up with other causes of the high Black crime rate. If you manage to do that without allowing past and present racism as a dominant factor you'll get bonus points who don't think it is because, you know, Asians.

Explain how past racism causes young Black men to gun down other young Black men in large numbers. Also explain why young Black men commit disproportionate rates of violent crime in Canada and the UK. And Alaska.

Racism isn’t past, for one thing.

BTW, what’s with all the white men killing each other and their women folk and kids?

Most crimes are committed by people who know their victims. Our society is still very segregated by color.

 

[Trausti]

Most crimes are committed by people who know their victims. Our society is still very segregated by color.

Yes. Most crime is intraracial. Which is why young Black men are also disproportionately victims of violent crime.