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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27880 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?

There are a number of confounders that may actually prove the opposite. The free spent more time among white people, enslaved spent more time among black people. Free would have been more likely to be intelligent: freed by owner in will because their work was skilled; bought their freedom. The most stupid slaves would be more likely to not be freed by the owner, as whites felt that they could not care for themselves (common belief back then). Freed would usually have been from smaller “operations”, not a large plantation, but perhaps an assistant to a blacksmith who would learn the craft. Freed are more likely to have white admixture from sexual relations.

Scott is losing his magic if he thinks there’s enough logic to consider the conclusions of the paper.

I’ve long been interested to see whether the black slaves who spent more time among white people (enslaved) fare better than the the recent arrivals, but there are so many confounders that it’s impossible to measure.

Scott is losing his magic if he thinks there’s enough logic to consider the conclusions of the paper.

In his defense he wrote "If true, this provides strong supports the ”cycle of poverty” story of racial inequality, and boosts the argument for reparations. "

'Boosting the argument' is not the same as endorsing it. It's like saying, if someone wanted to make a pro-reparations argument, they could try to use this paper as justification.

Also 'provides strong support' is a fairly "strong" statement. I would have expected "provides some support" or "adds some weight to".

I'm personally not very convinced by the 'cycle of poverty' argument, having seen rich families fail, and having come from a fairly poor one myself (and seeing others of my friends improve their lot as well). Culture & genes seem much more significant factors, and I think both are passed down through generations much more effectively and directly than wealth.

The difference in crime rates between the poor Amish (or Vietnamese refugees) and the not-as-poor in Detroit seem to support this.

I think poverty does encourage crime to some degree (less to lose!) as does disparity of wealth, but I think it's a much smaller factor than the idpol folks make it out to be.

Oh, I just remembered another nice counter-example given on the original motte site -- Catholics and Protestants in (Northern?) Ireland. The Catholics were systemically literally discriminated against (couldn't hold certain jobs, etc). Once that legal discrimination was removed, they had essentially equalized in ~2 generations. Sorry for the vague recollection, but I found it a really interesting and relevant data point for all of these "cycle of poverty" and reparation claims.

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