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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27878 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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In his latest link roundup, Scott links to (a pre-print?) of a paper claiming to show that "Black families who were enslaved until the Civil War continue to have considerably lower education, income, and wealth today than Black families who were free before the Civil War".

Here is Scott's commentary:

New study finds that black people whose ancestors were enslaved on the eve of the Civil War, compared to black people whose ancestors were free at the time, continue to have lower education/wealth/income even today. If true, this provides strong supports the ”cycle of poverty” story of racial inequality, and boosts the argument for reparations. But I’ve also seen studies say the opposite of this. I would be much more willing to accept the new study as an improvement on the old one if not for, well, things like the link above [1] - I have no evidence that anything like that was involved, but at this point it’s hard not to be paranoid. Does anyone know a good third-party commentary on this analysis?

[1] Here Scott talks about "the trend to bar scientists from accessing government datasets if their studies might get politically incorrect conclusions"

I'd be very interested in learning what you make of the study and how you think it links to Scott's conclusions. What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?

What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?

They'd have to address the other side of the equation - groups of immigrants that came with nothing to their name, but ended up doing ok, or even above average within a generation or two, or lottery winners who reverted back to their old socio-economic class within a generation or less.

In addition to what @RococoBasilica said, as well as the related fact that immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have cultural attributes associated with poverty (because poverty and being low-income are not quite the same thing) --compare Hmong poverty rates with Vietnamese-American poverty rates, for example -- historically immigrants have tended to settle in areas of the country in which poor people in general seem to have had higher level of social mobility. See, again, the Hmong. who tended to disproportionately settle in rural areas like Fresno.

related fact that immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have cultural attributes associated with poverty

immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have genetic traits predisposing them for poverty

In addition to what @RococoBasilica said, as well as the related fact that immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have cultural attributes associated with poverty

What RoccoBasilica said is basically the standard conservative argument on culture, not "the cycle of poverty", which as far as I know it relied more on material conditions.

historically immigrants have tended to settle in areas of the country in which poor people in general seem to have had higher level of social mobility.

So? There's nothing stopping people from moving to these areas?

which as far as I know it relied more on material conditions.

You are mistaken. For one thing, the cycle of poverty argument sees those cultural aspects as rooted in the original poverty (and/or slavery or Jim Crow in the case of African Americans), whereas the conservative argument tends to identify the source as personal failings. Though, really, framing this issue as liberal versus conservative is not particularly fruitful.

So? There's nothing stopping people from moving to these areas?

How is that relevant to the issue? The extent to which so many people want to read everything as a normative argument is quite depressing. I was merely positing location as a confounding factor which might help explain why, as you put it, "groups of immigrants that came with nothing to their name, but ended up doing ok."

You are mistaken. For one thing, the cycle of poverty argument sees those cultural aspects as rooted in the original poverty (and/or slavery or Jim Crow in the case of African Americans), whereas the conservative argument tends to identify the source as personal failings.

This may not be "Catholics worship the Virgin Mary" levels of not understanding your outgroup, but you sure are trying.

Though, really, framing this issue as liberal versus conservative is not particularly fruitful.

Sure, these are just labels. The point was that it's weird to shout "Eureka! It's the culture!" to people who have been saying "it's the culture" for decades.

How is that relevant to the issue? The extent to which so many people want to read everything as a normative argument is quite depressing.

I wasn't reading it as normative. I think it's an inadequate explanation, because if improving your standards was as simple as moving to another city, black people would have done so.

And that's without taking into account various ways of making this whole argument moot, like checking if there were any black people in these socially mobile regions, and if the disparities between them and other groups are much different than in the less mobile regions.

  1. Conservatives are not my outgroup.

  2. I am familiar with conservative arguments about the cultural causes of poverty, and I said that the liberal/conservative framing is not helpful because there is overlap between liberals and conservatives on this issue. Culture is obviously important; at the very least, attitudes toward work an education affect the likelihood of leaving poverty (at least at the individual level, but of course it is possible that that claim doesn't hold up so well at the group level). HOWEVER, My statement was NOT that conservatives do not consider culture to be a cause of poverty, but rather my statement was re views about the SOURCE of that culture. I very explicitly said that.

I think it's an inadequate explanation

I do, too. That is why I said that is merely a possible confounding factor re your causal claim relating to immigrants. I said: "I was merely positing location as a confounding factor which might help explain why, as you put it, 'groups of immigrants that came with nothing to their name, but ended up doing ok.'" A confounding factor is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association.

if improving your standards was as simple as moving to another city, black people would have done so.

Again, I didn't say it was. Besides, 1) they might not know the extent of the effect in general; 2) they certainly can't know the extent of the effect on their descendants specifically (remember, we are discussing multigenerational poverty and the effects of location thereon, not the effect of moving on an adult who decides to move. I.e., inter-generational mobility, not intra-generational mobility); 3) there are real, and obvious, costs to moving, including being uprooted from family and community. Hence, it could be perfectly rational to decline to move, even if your claim re immigrants is completely wrong, and location explains ALL of their relative success (no, I don't think it does. I am making a rhetorical point). Therefore, the fact every black person has not chosen to move doesn’t do much to rescue your argument.

The conservative argument is that those cultural arguments are rooted in poor welfare policies in the 60’s, not personal moral failings.

That is one conservative argument, not the only one. The moral failings argument predates the 1960s, as does, of course, entrenched poverty. That's why I said "tends." And, isn't one of the conservative criticisms of those welfare policies precisely that they undermine the moral traits supposedly needed to emerge from poverty? And then there is the traditional conservative distinction between the "deserving poor" (those who are poor through no fault of their own) and the "undeserving poor" (those who are poor due to character flaws and poor choices)

And unlike almost every other argument, this one is actually backed in observed, durable, large-scale outcomes, if unfortunately negative ones. Blacks used to have much better outcomes in marriage, much lower rates of fatherlessness, etc, all of which strongly correlate with a multitude of positive social and economic outcomes. The collapse of such statistics was predicted in advance of the implementation of key social policies, among them no-fault divorce, and those predictions did in fact come to pass.

And these predictions are strongly memory-holed, too, I’ll point out. Social conservatives have been right about the harmful effects of policies they oppose a lot, and dismissed so often with ‘have you ever been right? Remember what you predicted about no-fault divorce?’, that it’s nearly Cassandra at this point.

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