> Generally I don't like to compare the struggles amongst minorities in America. There is a multitude of factors that come into play when analyzing these types of things..

You may not like to compare, but you really should. Because when you compare you get to ask the critical question, "What things did this group do right to overcome their challenges, and can we draw lessons that help replicate that success in another group?"

When you compare blacks and whites, the differences in privilege are so obvious that you really can't see anything else that might matter. But when you compare blacks and Cambodians, privilege goes the other way - blacks have more. For all that went wrong for blacks, they generally didn't flee on boats with only the shirts on their backs after witnessing a quarter of the people that they grew up with being killed. Only to land in a country where they didn't speak the language, or understand the culture, and were generally disliked.

So what did Cambodians have in their favor?

I'm drawing from my thoughts and other comments here. The determination that it takes to be a refugee. True hope that they can create a better life. A culture of helping fellow minority members. A certainty that no matter what the frustration, it really could be worse.

Now can we encourage those attitudes in blacks? I believe so. However you don't do it by focusing on a narrative of, "Your life is hopeless because of things that happened before you were born. Things that are entirely out of your control."

> For all that went wrong for blacks, they generally didn't flee on boats with only the shirts on their backs after witnessing a quarter of the people that they grew up with being killed. Only to land in a country where they didn't speak the language, or understand the culture, and were generally disliked.

This is literally what happened through the Atlantic slave trade.. just replace "flee" w/ "were sold".

> I'm drawing from my thoughts and other comments here. The determination that it takes to be a refugee. True hope that they can create a better life. A culture of helping fellow minority members. A certainty that no matter what the frustration, it really could be worse.

> Now can we encourage those attitudes in blacks? I believe so.

I know that these characteristics have been shown time and time again within the black community. If you want to see a culture of helping fellow minority members look to the NAACP, if you want to see an example of determination please read "Up From Slavery", if you want to understand the hope to create a better life read "The Warmth of Other Suns".

My argument is not "things are out of your control" nor is it that there is something lacking in the black community that other successful minorities have demonstrated.. my argument is "here are the institutional and systemic barriers that are present -- if you want to understand the present situation and how to move forward you must understand them".

> ..."here are the institutional and systemic barriers that are present -- if you want to understand the present situation and how to move forward you must understand them"

I don't want to put words into GP's reply to you, so this is purely my interpretation of what they were saying. The standard go-to retort by advocates of black American equality when presented with examples of minority community success stories is, "So? Blacks in America have had to contend with 400 years of systemic slavery and discrimination!" The position of your argument, and others like it, is we have to "study" the barriers, we must "understand" them before we can make progress against them.

My counter-thesis is that while it is important to be cognizant of barriers, what I call "dinner table change" (the kind of changes that bring dinner to your family's table that night) comes most effectively through power, and power accrues most effectively to those minority communities who organize together culturally, socially, and economically. They work around the barriers, and undermine them over time by obsoleting them, turning them into anachronisms. There is one minority community that has powerfully proven this approach works. But it takes generations of time, and that is an unsatisfactory answer in today's climate.

I have in mind a community that endured not only slavery, but systemic discrimination for not hundreds, but thousands of years. And they made lemonade out of their sour position. The Jewish community. And many minority or disenfranchised communities can learn from the lessons Jews iterated through, found and practiced workable strategies through the millennia.

These aren't just lessons for ethnic minorities, either. The recognition of wealth inequality for example, can bind together people under that common cause into their own minority community. It is difficult to feel satisfaction of progress from signing petitions, voting, or politically participating to advocate for changes in laws, policies, and attitudes. Those activities still must be carried out, but expecting everyone who cares about such change to only channel their efforts in such manners is unrealistic. There is immense satisfaction however at a small and daily level, when for example a local minority small business serving a minority community notches up another satisfied customer.

I know there are many criticisms to this insular, tribalistic advocacy. Our outlook should be more inclusively expansive. We are better than what I am talking about. But there comes a time when the concerns of tactical survival mount to the point that it is better to acknowledge the mainstream system has failed a specific constituency (for now, hopefully), than to sacrifice the well-being of one's family, loved ones, and dear friends upon the altars of ideologies and "The Should".

There is a lot of wisdom to this. And a lot of minorities have had challenges which are now forgotten.

When we focus on things beyond our control, we create a sense of hopelessness. And the result is that we fail to do the things in our control that can create change.

Here is a lesson. If you go back 100 years ago, there was a resurgence of the KKK. The main target of their ire was NOT blacks, it was the Catholics (mostly Irish and Italian) and Jews. Their political power was such that Prohibition was passed with the main goal of giving more legal tools to discriminate against those groups. And their greatest stronghold was not in the South - it was in Oregon.

See https://www.portlandmercury.com/feature/2017/11/15/19472650/... for verification of this. My father's side of the family was Irish from Oregon. I won't forget a long conversation with my uncle about what it was like as a child growing up with concern about which neighbors might be KKK, and the importance of not drawing unwanted attention to himself at school.

Nor was this then a new conflict. The Irish largely came here as refugees from events like the Irish potato famine that happened under the long and brutal English occupation. This occupation began with English invasion in the 1100s. The conflict had been religious as well since Cromwell's put down rebellion with massacres in the mid-1600s. And then they came to the USA, a country founded and run by WASPs - White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Who knew and remembered this history of conflict as well as the Irish did.

For Catholics, the importance of JFK being elected was no different than the importance of Obama being elected to blacks. To date, JFK remains the only US President to be openly non-Protestant. Despite his family's wealth and power, he saw in the Civil Rights movement a familiar struggle.

When you study the long history of discrimination and oppression, do not satisfy yourself with only studying your own people's oppression. Understand that your story is not the only one. Learn about other people's struggles as well, learn what worked for them, and try to emulate them.

The black community has done so at points. For example the Civil Rights movement went much better in part because Martin Luther King learned from Gandhi's example and successes. However the current narrative that I see seems actively counterproductive.

You're focusing on a single variable. The above poster is recommending a multivariate approach. If a similar minority group can start from a worse position (not even knowing the language!) and advance to a better position in a single generation, then your single variable is lacking. The response of "go back 400 years" does not explain away the discrepancy. The common-sense approach is to consider other factors too.

> If a similar minority group can start from a worse position (not even knowing the language!) and advance to a better position in a single generation, then your single variable is lacking.

I can't agree with this sentence. I agree, not knowing the language puts you in a bad spot, but I think you are really underestimating the level of discrimination vs. blacks in America if you think simply "not knowing the language" is enough to put some immigrant group in a worse position than blacks in America.

I'm not sure what other variables you'd like me to use in this analysis but I think if you look back over the history of America you see that others have used one variable to levy their discrimination and it's always been race.

Are you saying present discrimination can explain the wealth gap? my initial response assumed you meant historical discrimination explains the current wealth gap. Thus, if other non-white groups can start at a similar level and attain a higher outcome, then I would posit that other variables must play a role. But maybe you're saying present discrimination (not levied at other groups) can explain it.

> others have used one variable to levy their discrimination and it's always been race

There have been countless forms of discrimination, not all of them associated with race. After all, it's imperfect people dealing with imperfect people.

Other factors I think are also relevant to present-day wealth gaps: family norms/stability (e.g. single-parent prevalence), cultural expectations, education, location. Undoubtedly these are entwined with each other and with the variable of race.

I think historical and present discrimination explains the gap, but I would say that the historical discrimination plays a bigger role because it has had time to "compound".

My general defense against the "what about other minorities" argument is that other minorities are not starting from a similar position to blacks in America and that 400 years of discrimination has compounded and sets blacks back.

The other factors would be very interesting to analyze but once again I think you would need to understand the entire history of America and racial discrimination to make a full comparison, for example:

- Family Norms / Stability: When comparing this across races you would need to take in account a few things, such as the disproportionate amount of black men who are incarcerated and how that affects family dynamics.

- Education: You would need to consider the fact that most public schools are funded via property tax, and then you would need to dig deep into housing discrimination history to see why property values in black neighborhoods are so low and why the schools are poorly funded also.. schools were segregated for a long time and are still pretty segregated now.

- Location: Most African Americans in America live in the south, which has a lower GDP than other parts of America. However, the south was once an economic power house in America... but the engine of that power house (slaves) never benefited from the wealth they generated. So that would also be interesting to analyze.

>I can't agree with this sentence.

Whether you do or don't doesn't really matter. Post after post has made the point that you are focusing on a single variable and it is clear that it's not explicit causation for the effects like you claim.

Like I said earlier: I'm not sure what kind of variables you'd like to include within this variance but I'd LOVE to to hear any suggestions.

There are at least two variables he's missing that matter a lot:

(1) Selection bias. The pool of immigrants who make it to America in the first place likely skews well above average.

(2) Culture/ecosystem problems in black communities, even if it's politically incorrect to argue it. Black neighborhoods are plagued by gang culture/violence, drugs, patriarchal absenteeism (estimates vary, but roughly 50% seems likely), intergenerational educational deficit (if parents are illiterate/undereducated, their children are likely to be so as well), and various other more generic issues that stem from chronic poverty.

If the level of absenteeism is very high, it is very likely that the parents are renters and not homeowners, so it circles back a little to the main point.

> If a similar minority group can start from a worse position (not even knowing the language!)

I don't know if we can say emigrating Cambodians were in a worse position than impoverished blacks . Immigrants self select for being willing to leave everything they know for the hope of a better life; they have also competently navigated a difficult process. This selection bias is accentuated in war, when the logistics of escape become trickier. Communities then cohere and reinforce each other on the other side.

Contrast that with American blacks. Captured by coastal kings who sold them to Europeans who transported them here against their wills. Any who stood up or out got eliminated. Loose to non-existent intergenerational information and wealth transfer. Et cetera

All the American blacks you refer to are dead, and can't be compared to far more recent Cambodian American immigration. Even if said blacks had wealth, its gone and irrelevant to modern blacks.

This makes even less sense than the original question.

The original poster posits a theory that generations of housing discrimination contributed to the enormous racial wealth gap. Another poster comes along and says "what about these immigrants who didn't face generations of housing discrimination?" And the conclusion of this is that the "single-variable approach" doesn't work.

It's too bad because the original point stands and in fact it's well documented in the literature. In fact an excellent book, The Color of Law [1], was recently published that shows very clearly in excruciating detail how racist policies systematically worked to deprive blacks of property and wealth.

But no, let's talk about the very different experience of the Cambodians and other minorities so we can continue to blame the blacks.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segreg...

That's an uncharitable read of my comment. (Or more likely my comment was clear as mud.) As you said, the above theory was that the current wealth gap can be explained by generations of discrimination. But if another non-white group can enter at a similar "difficulty" level and attain higher results, maybe the explanation is more complicated. I think then the focus would need to be on current (possibly discriminatory) policies and factors, rather than historical ones. Education, family unit, cultural factors, etc.

What mechanism could exist for transferring poverty from slavery of ancestors to poverty of current people? The examples of immigrants seem to show it's not being born poor or having a traumatic life experience and being disadvantaged. Could it be the knowledge of the history that's holding blacks back? If everyone somehow forgot Jim Crow and slavery, would the next generation of blacks do as well as immigrants, do you think?

Also, I really think you should have some evidence at all that slavery or persecution causes intergenerational poverty after the effects have gone. I hear that theory a lot and I've never seen any science to support it. Only to support immediate poverty of the individuals who were persecuted, not their great great grandkids.

Another counterexample is Australia - founded by convicts 200 years ago and in a much shorter time, they ended up doing very well compared to blacks since slavery.

> Could it be the knowledge of the history that's holding blacks back? If everyone somehow forgot Jim Crow and slavery, would the next generation of blacks do as well as immigrants, do you think?

Forgetting Jim Crow and slavery is not enough -- this thread helps to illustrate that. The effects of Jim Crow and slavery would need to be eliminated.

> Also, I really think you should have some evidence at all that slavery or persecution causes intergenerational poverty after the effects have gone. I hear that theory a lot and I've never seen any science to support it. Only to support immediate poverty of the individuals who were persecuted, not their great great grandkids.

How could it not? I mean just think about the institution of slavery for a minute.. there was a time where the Mississippi Valley had more millionares than any other place in America.. how do you think that happened? Through slave ownership? Black families were literally torn apart generation after generation, they were denied the opportunity to realize the wealth their labor produced, generation after generation. A slave owner passes on his million dollar plantation to his children.. what does the slave pass to his child?

> Another counterexample is Australia - founded by convicts 200 years ago and in a much shorter time, they ended up doing very well compared to blacks since slavery.

How are the Aboriginals doing?

> How are the Aboriginals doing?

Rather similar to how Native Americans are doing, I believe, not great. Their percentage of the population is similar too, around 2%?

We don't have anything comparable to black slavery. Convicts when they had served their time could integrate back into society. My great-great-x4 grandfather was a British convict who got 7 years and sent to Australia for stealing a handkerchief...

"How could it not?" isn't scientific, it's prejudice - you're assuming the conclusion. But there are so many example of it not happening. Here's another - Jews have been persecuted for centuries, kicked out of country after country, had whole families killed in the holocaust, and yet they repeatedly bounce back. Jews in Europe today are not a disadvantaged class despite their severe persecution from all sides before and during WWII.

If the effect is certain, how long does it take to wear off?

I also don't think you can ignore that the discriminatory lending, policing, and other policies also affect other minorities. The US enacted into law banning Chinese immigrants, white San Francisco was ready to mob and burn down to Chinatown at some point.

Totally agreed. I'm not trying to downplay the history of other groups in America as so much as highlighting the unique challenges that have affected black America.

The US enacted a law banning Chinese.. The state I live in (Oregon) explicit banned blacks in the constitution [0]. San Francisco was ready to mob and burn down Chinatown... "Black Wall Street" in Tusla, OK was burned down by a mob.. [1]

I did not want to get into a tit for tat comparison between oppression but I would implore anyone who is interested to really do their research on race in America.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/06/07... [1]: http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-...

>I also don't think you can ignore that the discriminatory lending, policing, and other policies also affect other minorities.

Just being clear, but wouldn't those also if not more so effect the immigrants OP brought up? Are we not also including Asian minorities?

I think you're very confused if you think other minorities faced anything like what blacks faced. Combined this with the well-known fact that most recent non-Mexican immigrants to America (after 1960) were often quite wealthy before they came to America and you're looking at a very different experience.

I hear that Native Americans had it pretty bad.

Have, not had.

See https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-... for one of the many current problems that natives have.

For the record I have family members living on reservations. Go back a little over a century ago, and natives were hunted for sport, like game animals. It was only 40 years ago that the USA officially discontinued policies of forcibly removing children from their homes and putting them into schools where they were mistreated. I personally know people who were beaten as children for speaking in their native language. Abuse and prejudice remain facts of daily life.