Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

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All it takes to deflate the narrative is a look at the success rate of recent immigrants to the USA and compare that to those who have been there for generations. An honest observer will notice that e.g. Nigerian immigrants do much better on average than "African Americans" (an odd name given that those Nigerian immigrants are far more "African" than those who claimed this name for themselves). This difference in outcome can not be due to the often-claimed "systemic racism" since that would affect a Nigerian fresh out of Lagos just as much. What, then, is the difference? That thing which these studies studiously avoid: culture.

Here's a few excerpts from an article [1] on the subject of Nigerians immigrants to the USA outperforming nearly all other groups - and yes, they outperform native-born Caucasians:

Education is an essential part of our culture ... we were encouraged to excel. Parents expected it of us ...

Sometimes that is why Nigerians in diaspora — especially the first generation — can be reluctant to talk about race and racial barriers, because we are conditioned to not say, ‘It is not going to work for me because . . . ’. They don’t want to talk about racial bias. They want to talk about the opportunities...

By not looking for "racism" but taking their lot in their own hands this group of people ended up as one of the most successful [2] ethnic groups in the USA. Had the narrative around "systemic racism" been true this would not be the case, i.e. the narrative is false. It is not just false but it is pernicious in that it leads to exactly the lack of success which these studies claim to want to solve.

[1] https://africans-in-america.com/2020/10/30/what-makes-nigeri...

[2] https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/spotchecks/yes-nigerian-...

Completely missing the mark here. Talking about education as part of the culture, is not also taking into account that African American communities were discriminated over a long period of time and had their culture and ability to build wealth suppressed. Nigerians were colonized, it’s true, but African Americans were enslaved and then subject to Jim-Crow era laws in addition to the current-day legal regime, which no doubt influenced African American culture and neighborhoods and basically most aspects of life. If you look at Nigeria today, there are certainly many parts of Nigeria where “western education” is not valued. But when you look at Nigerians who immigrated to the US, you’re not seeing the representative Nigerian demographic, just a small (elite) slice.

Additionally, you’re selecting out of the population when you just look at the minorities that were able to immigrate to the US. You should compare minorities that came to the US in representative chunks of the greater population — perhaps war refugees although even these communities have skews based on the nature of their immigration to the US.

I agree with your first point. As to your second, it’s notable that Nigerian Americans have greater mobility even than similarly educated whites: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231211001... (“Controlling for age, education, and disability, the wages of second-generation Nigerian Americans have reached parity with those of third- and higher generation whites.”)

That is great for Nigerian Americans perhaps speaks also to other factors in their favor. Would be curious to see breakdowns in lineage.

As for descendants of slaves in the US, please check out these lectures by Dr. Joy DeGruy-Leary, and her theory on Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She did much research and readings into the history of American blacks and compared with other peoples. Her work focuses on how healing can occur after centuries of generational trauma.

1: https://youtu.be/g6H7gGUQIFs

Specifically, check out minutes 15:19 (bookmark “Systemic generational trauma” to 32:47 “Denigrating the Child”.)

2: https://youtu.be/BGjSday7f_8 This great talk on the history of slavery and Jim Crow in the US and explains how both black and white Americans have trauma leftover from the legacy of discrimination.

Finally, as a desi person I must add that our (especially older) communities are often quick to deride and hold racism against African Americans. There is much belief in exceptionalism in immigrants to the US contrasted against the “failed” minorities. Well, as the child of immigrants, I anecdotally see that much of the success comes from a continuity and sense of belonging from family, values, religion, etc which while colonized, still maintain memories former glories. In contrast, American slaves were ripped out from their historical context and shipped transatlantic.

So as the professor notes, talking about “culture” and saying “it’s their culture” is really a misnomer and attempt to distract from the very real trauma that continues to be inflicted.

> Well, as the child of immigrants, I anecdotally see that much of the success comes from a continuity and sense of belonging from family, values, religion, etc

Isn't this what most people would call culture?

Please take a look at the lectures, indeed culture is influential in individual behavior but culture is often used as a cover for more nefarious iniquities. Culture is often also a product of these. So when we talk about culture to dismiss why wealth gaps or injustices are important, then we are distracting from root causes.

Culture in America goes hand-in-hand with socioeconomic status. A substantial portion of desis and Nigerians in America are of the highest economic class back in their respective homes, and they're coming from that culture. If that culture erodes as it can over generations, their social/economic mobility patterns start following that of the rest of Americans'.

In America, today, in streets you can potentially see folks who lived in a time before the civil rights movement. It's an alarming contrast which is being overlooked: the immigrant Africans from moneyed and successful families and the other group couldn't drink from the same fountain as his fellow man, and not be able to send their kids to the good schools

> Culture in America goes hand-in-hand with socioeconomic status. A substantial portion of desis and Nigerians in America are of the highest economic class back in their respective homes, and they're coming from that culture. If that culture erodes as it can over generations, their social/economic mobility patterns start following that of the rest of Americans'.

I think most Americans would fight you on even that second sentence. Because that implies culture matters. And that maybe it would help Appalachians get out of multi-generational poverty if they absorbed culture from Nigerian immigrants.

That aside, culture in America often doesn’t track with socioeconomic status. Many Chinese Americans, for example, came to California as laborers and the overtook white Californians. Vietnamese Americans came here as refugees and did the same. Asians have the highest poverty rate in NYC, but also dominate the selective admissions schools.

> because we are conditioned to not say, ‘It is not going to work for me because . . . ’. They don’t want to talk about racial bias. They want to talk about the opportunities...

As an immigrant raising “children of color” in America, this keeps me up at night. My parents never taught me to expect racism and so I’ve never encountered it in any meaningful sense living in this country.

But folks are on a kick about it now and want to teach my kids to think that way, and I think it’s setting them up for failure. How does it help my kids to be looking for and see racism? Even if one of them grows up and has a racist boss, can they really do anything about it? They can’t. It just means they need to work harder.

What can you do, other than telling your children that aiming for success is no more "acting white" than it is "acting Nigerian" or "acting Indian" or "acting Russian" or whatever? Speak up when the race baiters support their narrative, go to school board meetings and let the cabal know you're not having any of it. Home school if that is feasible, especially when your have access to a group of like-minded neighbours. Don't allow the narrative to go by without speaking up against it no matter when it comes up - in the media, in popular culture, at social gatherings, in church or mosque or synagogue or temple, etc. Don't be preachy but just state the facts as you know and have experienced them. You may be called out on doing so, may be accused of acting against your own interests, acting "white", being an uncle Tom and more of such but that is a hurdle you'll have to take - it just means you're getting close to the target.

Also, vote according to what candidates have done and what they promise to do, not according to "how people like you are supposed to vote". The people pushing this narrative do so because they expect to gain or keep power by portraying themselves as representatives of people like you, let them know they do not represent you and that their false narrative is not welcome because of the reasons you stated. While voting - and letting people know why you did so - won't solve the immediate problems caused by these false prophets it does help to deflate their narrative. There is a whole industry and economy built around keeping the narrative alive - Thomas Sowell had written extensively about this - so it won't just disappear overnight but once enough people speak up against it out will be hard for them to keep up the appearance of being righteous... and they'll change their target to some other identity category like gender or religion (this is already happening).

The tricky thing is that in my social context, the (liberal) white people are the ones encouraging minority kids to adopt an unhealthy, race conscious attitude. It puts me in the awkward position of having to emphasize race to gently remind my daughter that her dad and grandparents know way more about how to be brown in America than her teachers do.

By the way, “Uncle Tom” is too obvious. The new dog whistle is “pick me.”

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