Reparations for slavery via guaranteed incomes or other means are untenable for many reasons:
1. Slavery ended in 1865 and most non-black Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived after 1865 and were not slave-holders, and thus do not owe reparations.
2. Many blacks are descended from Africans who came to the US after 1865 and therefore are not owed reparations.
3. Many blacks are of mixed race; will their payments be pro-rated on the percentage of black/slave ancestry? How will such ancestry be measured? DNA? Historic or genealogical records?
4. Will blacks descended from African tribes that captured members of other tribes and sold them into slavery receive reparations?
5. Do all taxpayers have to pay into a reparations fund, or only non-blacks?
6. Will rich blacks (e.g., the Obamas) receive reparations or will there be a cap on recipients' income?
7. Will illegal aliens receive or pay reparations?
8. Will payments to blacks be reduced by the amounts paid for welfare, affirmative action and other benefits they and their ancestors have received since 1865?
9. Will reparations mean the end of affirmative action for blacks?
10. What about reparations for Native Americans, who lost so much land and so many lives?
11. Poor blacks are far outnumbered by poor whites, Hispanics, Native Americans; won't they be eligible for guaranteed incomes?
If reparations and guaranteed incomes are planks in the 2020 Democratic platform Trump will be re-elected.
15
Thought experiment: 2 job applications fall on an employers desk, one from someone with an Asian name, the other from someone with an identifiably 'black' name. Which applicant does the employer want to talk to? Why?
7
"Asian Americans don't have to deal with the legacy of genocide or slavery " The author is poorly informed. The Chinese endured pretty much slavery under Mao; Cambodians outright genocide; Japanese, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. the Vietnamese and Koreans, famine. Newly arrived Africans less so although clearly their countries had colonialism and tribal infighting. This competition about who suffered more is so insulting. Yes please work to fix institutions for everyone but don't insult readers with guilt trips that provoke a no you didn't response. let's get better funding for schools, higher Ed, more workplace protections in the name of everyone.
25
Yes.
The Trumps.
Reparations for slavery via guaranteed incomes or other means are untenable for many reasons:
1. Slavery ended in 1865 and most non-black Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived after 1865 and were not slave-holders, and thus do not owe reparations.
2. Many blacks are descended from Africans who came to the US after 1865 and therefore are not owed reparations.
3. Many blacks are of mixed race; will their payments be pro-rated on the percentage of black/slave ancestry? How will such ancestry be measured? DNA? Historic or genealogical records?
4. Will blacks descended from African tribes that captured members of other tribes and sold them into slavery receive reparations?
5. Do all taxpayers have to pay into a reparations fund, or only non-blacks?
6. Will rich blacks (e.g., the Obamas) receive reparations or will there be a cap on recipients' income?
7. Will illegal aliens receive or pay reparations?
8. Will payments to blacks be reduced by the amounts paid for welfare, affirmative action and other benefits they and their ancestors have received since 1865?
9. Will reparations mean the end of affirmative action for blacks?
10. What about reparations for Native Americans, who lost so much land and so many lives?
11. Poor blacks are far outnumbered by poor whites, Hispanics, Native Americans; won't they be eligible for guaranteed incomes?
If reparations and guaranteed incomes are planks in the 2020 Democratic platform Trump will be re-elected.
5
The economic gap between blacks and whites is intentional and with purpose...and like sex, money and murder it has its fan base; white people who like to be reminded of how much better off they are than blacks...which is why the media constantly writes about it.
3
People who do not take advantage of the educational opportunities offered to *everyone* by our government deserve what they get. That applies to both whites and minorities.
7
I’m not convinced by the argument that slavery, Jim Crow, redlining etc are the cause of black economic backwardness.
If this was true, countries like Haiti or Liberia which were founded by free blacks and have been free for centuries should be at least moderately prosperous.
Yet these are some of the poorest countries in the planet while nations which have experienced nuclear attacks, decimation by war, bloody civil wars or serfdom like Japan, Poland, China or Russia are doing much better.
Let’s derive conclusions from facts, not the other way round.
12
these "Answers" are really not answers to legitimate questions at all, but a rehash of talking points. regarding the answer to "what about poor Whites" it says their condition will improve with race specific and exclusive remedies..why, where is the basis for this statement. regarding what about Asian Americans the answer just breaks them down into sub grouos, so what? some Asian American sub groups are less successful than others, but overall as a group they have a higher median income than Whites, I guess we need a race specific set of redistribution policy to transfer income from Asians to Whites? and it ignores the established facts that Nigerian immigrants both recent and second generation, all of them black, do very well. An inconvenient fact once again ignored by the author.
12
bad schools bad housing no transportation, but conservatives keep telling people with nothing in personal wealth and nothing in infrastructure to lift themselves up by bootstraps they dont have
10
I cannot comment on most of Mr. Martin's views, but on two I can:
I used to live in Alaska, and while a free $2000 per year is welcome, it is not enough to get someone to quit his/her job. Indeed, many people on welfare in the lower 48 get much more than that per year. So of course getting a free $2000 per year might be welcome, but no sane person would quit their job for $2000 per year. But if it were $2000 per month (and perhaps added to the many other welfare payments, food-pin-kind, etc.), it certainly would have that effect.
Secondly, workfare, before it was gutted by Obama, was one of the most (if not the most) successful experiments in welfare administration in US history. The flocks of welfare cheaters who had been working in the cash economy prior to the 1990s had to either give up their welfare or give up their clandestine employment. Welfare rolls (ADC/TANF) were by approximately 60%, especially after Clinton signed a national workfare law in 1996 (Dick Morris told him he would lose the election if he didn't sign). Workfare is essential to, and highly successful in, deterring fraud and motivating people to work.
4
Here's a proposal to the social justice powers that be.
My white privileged ill gotten real estate wealth that was passed down from previous generations consists of an empty lot on the near east side of Detroit.
It's assessed at a value of $102. So much for the false narrative being perpetrated by social justice advocates like the author or Elizabeth Warren.
When my grandparents moved into it, the neighborhood was a very modest lower middle class to somewhat poor neighborhood.
When we moved out in the late 1980s it was essentially a war zone. The violence was being perpetrated by the neighborhood's residents. Our local public grade school was teaching that ancient Egyptians could have possibly traveled by means of gliders - yes, high self esteem.
I'm offering to give you my complete proceeds of my white privilege inter-generational real estate wealth.
Other than that, the guilt account was closed years ago. I do admit, when we moved out of the city, most white liberals had long since moved on. But you could still hear the cry of "Look, white flight!" So perhaps taking a cue from folks like Bernie Sanders, we should have left that city in the 1960s.
But we didn't and my family learned how to be Republicans.
And on and on it goes.
11
Agree entirely or not I applaud this piece for marrying values with fact based evidence. We need ever so much more of that
7
"Does anyone deserve to be poor?" Implicit in this question is the the doctrine of self determination, i.e. our behavior is the result of conscious, independent decision making. The more we learn about brain function and how it underlies all of our conscious functions, the more this doctrine fails the empirical test. Everything, including our decision making, is interconnected and interdependent. We are far less free than our subjective experience would have us believe. Does anyone deserve to be poor? No more than anyone deserves to be rich.
7
wages need to be enough to let people thrive not just survive. poverty level wages cause more poverty
10
This article has some flaws, but it is helpful, on balance.
For example, trauma affects people differently, whatever its severity. Plainly, some survivors of genocide bounced back well, others are struggling.
When the author tries to address racism, commenters raise the concern that there are tragic poor White stories too. There are. They’re heartbreaking.
This article is about groups. It’s especially about the plight of people that fall into poverty or never found a way out.
Just like there are higher status individuals with questionable morals, there are poor people that behave appallingly as well. There are Madoffs and dealers, OJ’s and gangsters.
There are poor people and middle income that work hard and can’t get ahead. There are lottery winners and rich people that fail upward, like America’s man at the top.
The arguments on the left and right seem fundamentally different. Left: Should we try to give people enough to survive in our unjust society? Right: Should we build more jails for bad poor people? Left: Can America afford social justice? Right: Why do we pay taxes?
I think there’s a basic lack of empathy. This article tries to address that. It’s a noble attempt to bring these debates back to helping more real people thrive.
If we get distracted by bootstrap or oppression olympics narratives, we all lose. When we ask what we should do for our country, it’s got to be making it work for more people. It’s not working for poor people. We should fix that.
15
"Guaranteed income", "racial justice" .... Hmmm
What about work ethic? What about real life versus academic theories?
Our business introduced a new product line to a manufacturing plant we own, and needed approximately 30 new employees. The jobs are not dangerous, dirty, or require heavy lifting. This is what happened:
A majority of the people who asked about the jobs and filled out applications never showed up for interviews. Many people we hired never showed up for work. Some who did quit after a day or two. Others would show up some days and not others. Of those who showed up regularly, a majority did as little work as they could get away with. A number of others told us to call them only when their unemployment benefits ran out.
This unfortunate attitude wasn't racial; it applied to both white and black employees and prospective employees. Has Ms. Martin ever tested her theories in the work-a-day world?
22
@Stew R Quotation marks around the phrase "racial justice." Hmmm... What the writer cited was statistical evidence and also the testimony of poor people. Not theories. Your experience does say something about the current society as a whole. But if you wanted harder workers try immigrants.
4
Yet, after 10 years of seeking, I have apparently been deemed unhirable. I, a degreed and experienced professional.
Are you trying to save a few bucks and hiring mostly millennials? Are your work practices and workplace environment safe? There are plenty of grown ups in America who are not impoverished and willing to work for a hand up. I've worked with many of them at temporary job sites and in part-time labor arrangements. Perhaps you should relocate down South.
3
Thank you for writing this response.
3
It doesn’t take an economist to figure out the already-built prisons need prisoners’ labor. Prisons are the new plantation.
7
Yes. Keep writing about the people that are usually ignored in our news stories except when focusing on certain pathologies like criminality or addiction.
2
Does anyone deserve to be poor?
Trump does.
From what Americans have learned about him in the last two years, he has earned very few honest pennies in his entire adult life.
16
In the opening sentence you ask if anyone deserves to be poor the answer you get what you deserve do drugs ,drop out of school ,commit crimes then yes you made those life decisions now do not expect me to pay for your poor life choices with my tax dollars, because every dollar I pay in taxes is one less I have for my family. It is not fair to my family to have to go without so my hard money is spent on people who disregarded the rules of society I have no pity or use for them
22
Income Inequality
Upload my income to triple its current –
Upgrade my station with income this moment,
Whatever I make it’s to more I aspire -
Consume kingly income – no reach to retire:
Unequal income, boo hoo and haha,
The have-nots boo hoo while I sing tra-la;
No harm and no foul, the poor struggle on -
Jesus will love them till they shuffle on.
1
"Indeed, 66 percent of Asian-Americans are foreign-born, meaning they are dealing with a legacy of whatever structural DISADVANTAGE was rooted in their country of origin and the economic implications of immigration."
This statement is naive and a common misperception. Look at the Chinese and Indian tech/computer students and workers who emigrate here via our universities and big tech companies. The vast majority come from UPPER-MIDDLE class families in India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong. Also Malaysians of Chinese descent, mostly coming from Kuala Lumpur. So many of these elegant ARISTOCRATS were raised like royalty on the sweat and demeanment of the outrageously poor (generally darker colored) servants and workers in their countries of origin. Upon arrival in the U.S., these polished and hard-driving meritocrats—unschooled in compassion, who were born on third base and acculturated to looking down on and berating the darker-colored people who served them—are straight away deemed "people of color" and "disadvantaged." It is quite an hypocrisy. Most of them are highly, highly advantaged, in more ways than most Americans today could ever imagine.
7
My experience working in poor Chinese neighborhoods tell a different story . Kids of restaurant cleaners , dishwashers , cooks who couldn’t learn to speak English became highly educated and successful citizens . I was working there got over 34 years and was amazed seeing their generational advancement .
11
Conservative - the person owned by compelled by obsessed with afraid that and easily led because of the terrible fear that someone somewhere is getting something they don’t have while worshipping wealth they don’t have might have or will never have
10
Ms. Martin: You ask: "Does anyone deserve to be poor?" That question misleadingly suggests that those who deny that the poor are unfairly disadvantaged believe that those who are poor deserve it. Wrong. No one deserves to go blind. But that does not mean that if someone does go blind it's the fault of somebody else. Likewise, nobody may deserve to be poor (except perhaps those who steal from others). But someone may be poor through no "fault" of society or anyone else either.
7
There should not be any credit cards only debit cards. Letting naive consumers get into debt at high interest rates is criminal. Also, economic common sense should be a yearly part of the school curriculum. When a person is in debt, they are in bondage.
6
@Phyllis Mazik
Credit card debt is a problem, but not as big as mortgage and student loan debt. When you consider the ratio of average income to avg cost of a modest home or a decent public education, the #s dont add up for most professions. Then throw in rental rates that prevents young people from ever being able to do more than pay the minimums on their student loans, dragging out the payments for decades and forcing them to pay maximum interest and preventing them from ever saving even a small down payment for a home. The modern economy is designed to keep the working and middle classes in the bondage of debt. Consider how much of the wealth that has been created in the past 2-3 decades has come from debt and debt servicing.
3
I have a few questions.
Does everyone deserve a job? If so what should the minimum pay be?
Does everyone serve a free education?
Does everyone serve free health care?
Does everyone have the right to have as many kids as they want regardless of their income?
Does everyone deserve to smoke, drink, do drugs, engage in risky behaviour and still get free healthcare?
If you're poor and at least some of it is due to bad choices, who's responsible for that?
Who should pay to address the inequities of this society?
Who should pay for all the free stuff?
15
The responses that this series received only underscored, for me, how much we need these public conversations ...
You want a conversation about being poor and public transportation?
One evening my father was getting off the Chene St. (Detroit) bus which he took home daily from work. We couldn't afford a car. The bus stop was about two blocks from our house.
As he walk home he was attacked, beaten and robbed by two thugs. He managed to walk home but when he walked into the house one could see something was wrong. He told us he was beaten and robbed. He was about 64 years old. He was a WW2 veteran and no, we had no intergenerational ill-gotten privileged real estate passed down to him or us as the current false liberal narrative maintains. He was partially disabled as a result of the attack. No one was ever arrested.
My father never bothered anyone. We remained in our neighborhood while it had been transformed from a modest lower-middle class neighborhood into a war zone.
The land on which our house once stood? It's a vacant lot now, assessed at a value of $102. I still own it.
But not to worry, my family has moved up from the lower 20% to the top 10% of the economic scale, with a public school education and degrees from public universities.
So on and on it goes, the liberal perpetual motion guild machine. I think back to my life in Detroit and when I read articles like the present one I just shake my head.
You want a conversation?
16
@Jp public school education and public universities -- those are public goods
5
Does anyone “deserve to be poor?”
Hmm.
Does any child deserve to be poor? No.
Does any adult. Sure, of course.
But what of kids who don’t deserve poverty being born to adults who do?
9
"While helping people escape addiction, find work, or go back to school should remain a part of any anti-poverty effort we undertake, recognizing 'the inherent worth and dignity' of each and every person liberates us from the judgmental obstacles inhibiting the unconditional assistance that actually addresses the lack of resources that define poverty. Food, clothing, shelter, healthcare; these are things EVERY man, woman, and child have a right to because each and every one has WORTH and DIGNITY. No person’s value as a human being is contingent upon their decisions, past, present or future. None of us are ultimately defined by our worst mistakes. Nobody deserves malnourishment or to suffer shelterless through a bitter winter beneath a thin blanket for ANY REASON."
https://medium.com/@craig.axford/who-are-the-undeserving-poor-when-i-meet-one-ill-let-you-know-30cd7a02bb4
1
A large majority of Americans are over worked underpaid, scared and burnt out.
In a nation as rich as ours, working poor is a disgrace. Clearly labor has value because it’s making a small percentage of the population very wealthy. People need to stand up and ask for their fair share.
8
@T. Johnson workers need to be paid enough to see a better future -- we need to stop subsidizing walmart because it pays people so little that its people require food stamps
8
What about capitalism itself? Left unchecked, as it is pretty much in the US, the system rewards the few and beggars the many. Only drastic measures on the order of Swedish or Danish social democracy will produce anything approaching social justice. No one deserves to be poor. And no one deserves to make the sort of money American CEOs make.
13
@Harry B The trouble with capitalism is the rewards are spread unequally; the trouble with socialism is the misery is spread equally. It certainly is nice to be altruistic and believe that the system is unbalanced and those who have more, even if it was fairly and honestly earned, should give more to those who have less. Keep in mind however, that if you believe that, then 95% of the people in the US should give up their wealth to the rest of the people of the world, 95% of whom have much less wealth than us. Are you prepared to give away your wealth to help the world, or do you only want other people to give their wealth to help the world?
6
@Dr B
Redistributing some wealth within the US does not logically require redistributing all US worth across the world.
3
Did I read your comment correctly? Are you seriously claiming the lifestyle and conditions of life in Sweden and Denmark are "misery?" In truth their standard of living is much higher than ours, by many objective metrics.
6
I have run through many of the comments in response to this piece. From my perusal I have noticed that a major point has been missed. I can only be reminded of the Phil Ochs song, "There But for Fortune." The song is a way of looking at success and suffering through the same lens. Today in a supposedly advanced civilization every person deserves to be accounted for and given the opportunity to survive and thrive. Allowing anyone to fall behind reminds me of the holocaust when decisions were made for prisoners to move left or right. We are a long way from recognizing the humanity and value inherent in all beings.
9
Asking whether anyone deserves to be poor is a leading question, just as asking if anyone deserves to be ill or unhappy.
A more fair question would ask how much obligation people in a society should accept for the undeserved misfortune of others.
5
@George Good point, and perhaps equally important is to ask how much obligation people in a society should accept for those whose misfortune was self-induced. So much ill-fortune occurs in those who choose to have children too early, to raise them as a single parent, and to not insist that they complete school before they start a family. There are many who have undeserved misfortune, but many more whose poor choices in life have caused their problems. Should we have the same obligation to fix their lives as those who are poor through circumstances beyond their control.
8
There are a certain number of people in society that are utterly incapable of taking care of themselves. Likewise, there are multitudes of helpless children with no chance because of their parents neglect and inability to function. Compassion demands that we take care of them. The problem lies in determining who needs (deserves?) that help and how to help.
In recent decades the prevailing attitude of advocates has been that it is not fair to inquire into deservedness or to require lifestyle standards in return for assistance. That attitude poisons the willingness of much of society to support more generous aid.
"Welfare queens" and steaks bought with food stamps are mean excuses for lack of compassion. But the sight of parents covered with tattoos, smoking, at ten dollars a pack, and with raggedly dressed children in a battered vehicle is everywhere. The thought of what money spent on smokes and tattoos could have done for the children inspires murderous rage.
So what to do? Checks to these parents will be spent on themselves. Social workers are boxed in. Do nothing and be blamed for the abuse of the children. Take all parents to court whose children suffer and be accused of snatching children from loving parents. Money to the truly helpless is gone the day it is received.
Accountability?
Determining who "deserves" assistance is a deadly balancing act, prone to either hard-hearted oppression or blind largess that destroys public support, but it must be done.
20
@David Very nicely put.
4
If you do a supermarket and clothing study, you will find that Alaskans pay $3000 more for food, clothing and shelter than the average consumer in the lower 48 states, making their $2000 annual state payment actually not enough, hence they need to work more to make up the gap.
5
"Does anyone deserve to be poor?" Of course. Any adult, regardless of race, who wastes money on non-necessities, fails to save, makes poor life decisions like having children without a partner and/or without the financial resources to care for a family, abuses drugs, etc. "deserves" to be poor.
"Poor" is also a relative term. Being "poor" in America today is a whole lot better than being "poor" fifty years ago. Being "poor" is also not permanent. People move into and out of poverty throughout their lives.
America will always have "poor" people. The good news is that anyone willing to work and be financially responsible can climb out of poverty and enjoy a material standard of living that is the envy of the world.
14
Most people do not climb out of poverty by.free will and hard work. That’s a myth.
3
I don't think a meaningful public conversation on this topic is possible anymore. The far right has mastered the art of misinformation so thoroughly that the propaganda swirling around the topic has created an automatic responses in the minds of people that are susceptible to the anti-government message. A massive part of our population now has a fanatical belief that any government action is inherently bad.
17
@Joshua DiGiovanni You have a good point, but it is equally true that a massive part of our population have a fanatical belief that all government action is inherently good. Truth is probably in the middle.
5
@Dr B
I am an older white man. I have known a lot of people in my life, across the political spectrum. I have thought about this seriously and I cannot think of even one person I have known who thought that "all government action is inherently good." Not one.
I have, however, known many people who make impulsive, sweeping and silly generalizations.
2
This is a very complex question and is one that will be difficult to answer. During my 50 work years I normally worked harder, put in more time, and constantly sought advancement. Most of the time I was rewarded, but not always. There were plenty of other co-workers who were satisfied with meeting the minimum expectations! When you have a worker who exceeds standards and makes the firm money, who should get the larger salary. What I saw in industry and academia was that there was little differential reward between a top and average performer.
How do we convince poor students that education and hard work are important and necessary for success in the workplace? IMHO too many parents don't take care of their children or encourage them to work hard, and make excuses for their lack of motivation.
As a company, who are you going to hire? Someone with a quality education or someone who finished high school that taught him very little? Then, include firms that require drug tests and this eliminates a large group of poor applicants! Then there are workers who refuse to move whenever their jobs are lost.
My point is that many things other than race determine who will be poor. As long as the US is a capitalist country, there will likely be rich and poor. Should the US become more democratic socialist then additional social programs will provide more support to the poor.
4
Questions about what others "deserve" (like questions about what "should" be done) automatically invite value judgements, and invite occasions for virtue signaling. To argue that ANYONE "deserves" poverty is to judge AND condemn. Let's stop that line of questioning.
Zoom out, look at the landscape that contains the portrait. Never in the history of planet earth was there more material abundance and prosperity to be observed than here and now. Reasons to tolerate poverty in this world today that DON'T imply greed, spite, selfishness and harsh judgement are vanishingly rare--I can't think of a single one. Insecurity plagues us all--the weak allow it to justify condemning others to suffer, supporting institutionalized, systemic misery as "necessary" and "natural" and "inevitable." It is not any of those things. It is not even intractable.
I can't hope to propose a solution that fat westerners will consider. I suggest that hundreds of millions of westerners look around themselves with open eyes, drop their pose of superiority, and gain some perspective. Understand that we all live on this small floating rock as a single phenomenon with only a very few, tiny and inconsequential individual differences; otherwise, we are all the same thing. Mass compassion would likely result. Roadblocks to ending poverty are no match for widespread, societal compassion.
7
@William Romp It sounds like you're saying that those with more wealth should give to those with less. Great idea, let's start with your wealth.
While there is ample justification for aiming programs that increase employment, wages, health care, etc. towards minorities, and that it will, by extension, help poor whites, if you try to sell these programs this way you'll meet stiff resistance. In fact, the programs need to be aimed without discrimination in any direction. "A rising tide lifts all boats", and it isn't targeted to "boats of color".
This is why the ideas of Sanders, Warren, and AOC are aimed at helping raise the economic standing of all Americans. Too bad so many people of color didn't realize this when Bernie challenged Hilary - his programs would've done much more for people of color, and of course whites than those of Mrs. Clinton who was beholden to Wall St. and the donor class.
Now we have chance to do it over. Let's not blow it by once again focusing on identity politics. If you divide Americans - no matter how noble the intentions - you'll only serve to pit them against each other and you'll get nothing done. Trump and the Republicans would love nothing better than to see the Democrats execute a self-inflicted divide and conquer strategy, which would negate their natural majority and allow the Republican minority to keep winning.
We need to end discrimination of all kind if we ever want true equality.
7
While I entirely agree that racism has resulted in much of the wealth disparity in this country--and many other racial disparities, for that matter--I see no purpose in focusing on the racial component and then saying, almost as an aside, that fixes will bring attendant benefits to whites as well. Why not just recognize the common ground of poverty?
Poor rural whites and poor urban blacks, as examples, have so much in common: multigenerational poverty, poor educational attainment, few job opportunities, broken families, high rates of substance abuse and teen pregnancy, violence, etc. Aside perhaps from tailoring benefits and aid to fit a given community, it seems to me that we can address these issues in a way that brings people together, rather than pitting one identity group against another.
15
I was always teetering on poverty up until 2011. In 2009 I was awarded a job training scholarship. I was fortunate to be able to draw on unemployment while in the program. Plus a part time job that pro rated the unemployment benefits. Took small steps from scrounging change for bus fare to buying a pass to purchasing a vehicle. From giving up an apartment to renting a room to an apartment to buying a house. I had to move out of state for my first nursing job. It was either that or scrounge around the Central Valley of CA in part time jobs. I was fortunate to have a supportive church family and just really good friends who helped keep me focused on my goal. It takes a community to support someone on their path to a better life. You need to understand how toxic friendships and relationships keep you from your goals. Job training needs to be-approached holistically (housing, health care,transportation, mental health).
20
As a highly educated white woman who has never been able to earn above poverty wages, I have quite a lot to say about this issue. My background was middle class (dad was a lawyer) and everyone’s in our family went to college, most have graduate degrees ( I have a masters and completed a two year research fellowship). I paid for my husband to go to medical school, we divorce s when he graduated. Personal circumstances led me into poverty. Although I was skilled, educated and motivated, I could never find good paying jobs. There were unfortunate sabotages - e.g. a good job was lost when the post card did not reach me telling me I had that job! (1972). It was never one thing... always a cascade of events. When I completed my MA in internet technology, I was @ 58 - tech companies would not hire me. I got lot s of great short term contracts but never earned my way out of poverty. Now I have subsidized housing and manage to live very well on less than 10k/year in San Francisco. I get free medical care (2 hip replacements and physical therapy cost me nothing) + free public transportation. I do focus groups and mock trials for a little extra $$ and the occasional part time or temp job. I volunteer at many of the cultural institutions. I love my life, have made peace with poverty.
21
The sentence that jumped out at me is the one that said "unreliable transportation is a huge issue for people experiencing poverty." Yes. A car costs roughly $10,000 a year, maybe more. Decent transit could help poor people young and old, black and white. We should be putting more money into it.
27
@Blonde Guy
Keep in mind that decent transit in rural areas means your own car, and if it breaks down for more than a couple of days, you lose your job. We actually keep an extra older car on hand for those events, available to several nearby family households. Rental cars are an hour away, and most people don't have the money for one, let alone expensive car repairs.
18
Maybe no one "deserves" to be poor. No one "deserves" to be blind either. But just as no one else may be responsible for someone being blind, the fact that someone is poor may also not be anyone's fault. So suggesting that those who do not blame anyone else for the existence of poverty in this country believe that those who are poor "deserve" it is unfair.
10
@Jay Orchard In this country it is someone's fault: it's the ultra rich and their politicians. The rich who rarely or never pay their fair share of taxes, and the politicians, these days Republicans especially, who attack and cut back the meager government programs designed to help the poor such as Medicaid, SNAP, supplemental housing assistance, Pell grants, etc. To say that poverty just happens is to be as irresponsible and immoral as the politicians who these days take a cruel pleasure in outdoing one another in multiplying misery.
5
How successful and wealthy one becomes may be influenced by racial and social bias but, overall, it depends on how intelligent one is. It is a falsehood to pretend that all people have equal abilities and, given the same opportunities, will succeed financially in life. I have worked with the public for many years and I have found some to be brilliant, many of an average IQ and many who can barely function. The very intelligent tend to be wealthy, the average- typically middleclass, and those on the low end, poor. Of course, there are always exceptions.
16
@Aaron Adams
Do you remember the Eddie Murphy movie "Trading Places"?
I'd like to see any of the trump kids trade places with an inner city kid.
6
The Mexican president, Lopez Obrador, has just given everybody 68 or over, $65 a month assistance. It was paid for by reducing the outrageous salaries and benefits of politicians such as senators, governors, etc.
I humbly suggest that Mr Trump seriously consider doing the same for you, our neighbors; beginning with his own salary.
8
@Laughingdog
Trump doesn't take a salary.
3
@Laughingdog Great idea! Why don't you start by giving the poor some of your money.
2
Fair-minded, reasonable people can disagree on a lot of issues regarding wealth and poverty and how we address economic disparity as a society. However, we should ALL be able to agree that children should not be held responsible for the sins of their parents. Adults of all colors make choices about how to live, within the framework of what is available to them. Children do not get to make such choices. All children deserve adequate shelter, healthy food, a decent education, and access to healthcare.
It might sometimes be difficult to feel empathy for adults whose choices contribute to their own problems. It’s impossible to feel anything but compassion for children in poverty.
20
If categorizing "Asian Americans" is a disservice to the diversity among that group. Shouldn't we apply the same logic to "whiteness?" There is more diversity in that group and when we lump people together we erase cultures and histories that should be celebrated.
23
We will all be better served if we strive to give every single person economic justice. By doing that, social justice will follow.
12
When I think over the sweep of history one situation dominates everything else. That is that the inherent characteristics of human beings and the societies they create are unequal. Even when the inequality is extreme enough to result in a revolution the inequality shortly comes back with different players. The broad based prosperity of the post WW2 US is a unique blip in history and we are now returning to the norm. We cannot throw off the genetic lessons of the jungle. Most of us cannot think past them either. But in the end death makes us all equal.
6
One of the key questions here is what do we mean by poor? I'd certainly hope that no one believes that anyone deserves to be poor or to lack shelter. But does everyone "deserve" to be comfortable, or to enjoy material things they didn't work to earn themselves?
And what does "deserve" mean in this context. If someone works 40 hours a week, does that automatically mean that they should have enough money to support not only themselves but also a family?
These are the truly hard questions.
15
The racial wealth gap is real. And in this wealthy country, supposedly a democracy geared to help even the least among us, the inequality remains. And this affects minorities by a mile, not only in lesser opportunities in getting a quality education anf health care, but also in housing and jobs (its lack thereof). A more progressive taxation would do a lot of good to cut down this gross injustice. Thsi chain of inclusion and diversity can never be stronger than it's weakest link. For this to change however, we must be willing to pay attention, open our eyes and ears, and show solidarity in a community project we ought not ignore, be participants instead.
3
Give corporations a choice: either pay your fair share of taxes or share your profits equally among every single person who works for the company (including all those "independent contractors" and "consultants" and "interns" who do all the day-to-day work that keeps the company functioning) as well as paying them all a real living wage.
And no, no one deserves to be poor. Until the rich face as many consequences for their actions as the rest of us do, then it's unfair to worry about "moral hazards." No one chose to be born into a society with an economic system that does not, in fact, ensure that everyone who puts in an honest 40 hours of work a week can afford food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, internet access - and the opportunity for advancement to a position that can earn them the means to raise a family as well.
If the people tasked with running the economy are unwilling to make it an even playing field then the only fair solution is universal basic income.
38
It is possible in this country for every person to have access to decent healthcare, food, shelter, clothing, and education. I believe that- the resources exist. What we lack is prioritizing these above other aims, even though they should form the basis of societal aims. Universal healthcare systems around the globe spend far less per capita than we do, for better results. Access to better food would probably improve health and productivity. Better education would cut back considerably on what we spend on prisons and other forms of poverty aid. Do we really need to spend a trillion per year on defense? 4 trillion on a for-profit health care system that is bankrupting the populace? People who say we can't possibly do anything about poverty usually have a cushy lifestyle and no incentive to buy into the idea. They dream up excuses and make up outright lies to support their claims. But the reality is, they just don't want to give up even the smallest part of that cushy lifestyle.
29
If 66% of Asian-Americans are foreign-born, it's not surprising they are more successful on average. Despite what some people will tell you, moving to a foreign country takes guts and determination and so immigrants do tend to be among the "best people".
By showing the effort and initiative to pack up and start a new life in another country, immigrants are already modelling the behaviour that makes them more likely to succeed than the average person who sits at home and complains.
58
@Anthony Flack
This.
My husband's parents were immigrants. They grew up with poverty and trauma in their native country. When they came to America, they landed in a poor, crime ridden ghetto.
Within 8 years they had accumulated enough savings to purchase a home in a middle class neighborhood. Their two sons have graduate degrees. Their six grandchildren all live in affluent suburbs with excellent schools.
This narrative is very common among the immigrants in their community.
Meanwhile, the native born Americans who grew up and live in the exact same neighborhood they originally lived in are all sunk in single parenthood, crime, and gross dysfunction.
It's not just the neighborhood; it is culture. You can overcome a bad neighborhood with two hardworking, frugal, birth control using, married parents.
10
Not really. It says more than anything that you have the resources to do so. That doesn’t make you “the best”. It means you were already on 2nd base.
2
@Anthony Flack
So then, why is the Asian-American poverty rate higher than the white American poverty rate, as stated in this article?
2
This article seems to be for sociologists. Not mentioned are individual choices clearly observable to educators and helping professionals. It stands to reason that a woman trying to cope alone with children will have difficulties. Problems mount with inadequate transportation (school, employment). Mental stresses caused by "not enough to go round" lead to preventable failures. Chronic instability afflicts larger families more. Whether caused by failures of housing or other policies mentioned, large families with various different needs but without a father are bound to be less able to thrive. This is not new in human societies. It is wonderfully portrayed in the novels of Charles Dickens. Some choices today seem to cause inevitable poverty despite more opportunities. If a given community wants to effect change, even small alterations in behavior (e.g. voting, group affiliation) require energy. Chaotic home lives drain energy from democratic participation.
35
At every economic level, there are good people who work hard and live honestly, and others who are lazy, who cheat and steal.
I've heard many wealthy people crow about how they inflated entertainment deductions on their taxes, or skirted sales tax by having expensive purchases shipped to another state, or charged to their corporate account. They're never caught, and they do this year after year, congratulating themselves on their savvy.
Yet when a poor person is accused of cheating or stealing, often for small amounts, the law comes after them with a vengeance, often completely derailing their lives in the process.
And we condemn them for their immorality, painting them as undeserving of our compassion because of their actions.
For every Bernie Madoff, there are thousands of poor people trapped in prison because they couldn't afford a decent lawyer, or couldn't pay the fine. Double standard indeed.
119
@Elizabeth A
Let's not forgot the billions in corporate tax breaks - these are simply government handouts in a different form.
55
You claim that the structural disadvantage that foreign-born Asian-Americans had "was rooted in their country of origin and the economic implications of immigration" which in most cases is a "different order than a legacy of genocide or slavery." Let's assume that merely growing up poor is much worse than being enslaved or subjected to genocide. But how does that translate into continued economic disadvantage for the descendants of those victims many decades later? Are you suggesting that a people who were once slaves or the victims of genocide are permanently economically handicapped? With respect to genocide the experiences of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who immigrated here after WWII show that a history of being subjected to genocide does not prevent economic advancement. And as far as slavery is concerned where is the rigorous evidence that the descendants of slaves many generations later are suffering from the "legacy" of slavery? To the extent that blacks still suffer from racial bias that bias is not limited to the descendants of slaves but is directed to all people of color.
29
@Jay Orchard
Following the end the Civil War, there was a hundred years of Jim Crow in the south and redlining in the north. Then the housing and labor benefits offered to whites after The New Deal, and again at the end of WW2, were refused to black Americans. Widespread institutional racism has affected African Americans since the country was founded. People who immigrate to the US come from families who have not necessarily suffered the same historical generational racism and are often university educated. There is a big difference.
40
@Jay Orchard Yeah, but Asians from birth for the most part (not in all cases) who come here are raised since childhood to feel they are special, they can do the anything, etc. In other words, most are raised as white people are here (almost everyone I know fits this category - I've met rare exceptions though).
What I've observed here (and I used to be very much a "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of person) is that since childhood, people of colour but particularly black people, are bombarded with messages, overt and subliminal, that somehow causes them to think they are deficient, not good enough, etc. It comes in many different forms. Even the lectures black parents give to their kids about behaving in front of the police, when white parents don't, causes this kind of message to percolate through.
This kind of focus on identity is a very uniquely American exercise. It has its strengths also but it has its weaknesses too. Children seem to be very sensitive to praise or lack thereof. If you're told since birth you'll have to work twice as hard to make it in the world, it sets of an inferiority complex in the average child.
I don't know about rigourous evidence. For me, having seen this anecdotally, was enough to change my mind about a more conservative view (which I still believe in, whenever the child is raised the way I believe every child should be raised) to a view that no person is an island and everyone depends on everyone else for their success.
15
It’s not just about being descendants of slaves, it’s the persistent multigenerational oppression that came with it.
1
The only people who deserve to be poor are those who become wealthy by taking advantage of poor people. Slum lords, corporations who don't pay a fair living wage while the workers struggle to make ends meet, corporations who are destroying the planet and environment while the average person gets sick from their greed, and grifters who refuse to pay the people who do work/labor for them, deserve to be poor. I left out one very important group of people....health insurance executives.
71
Ms. Martin's assertions here are rather simplistic, and espouse the typical black and white oppressor versus oppressed Neo-marxist rhetoric that has gained traction in recent years. At the very least she pays some lip service to the fact that racial groups aren't as effective indicators of social trends as they might seem, but the nuance ends there.
Ms. Martin, you say whites have never faced in this country housing discrimination like redlining. How do you explain covenant agreements against Jews and Catholics, then? Against Irish and Italians when they first came to this country in the 19th century? You say whites don't have to deal with racial bias, but is the assumption of guilt and having a leg up in society due to purported "white privilege" not just that? And that's notwithstanding that whites are ineligible for many of the scholarships, welfare programs, and are held to higher standards in university admissions than blacks or hispanics. All this while there are roughly as many poor whites in this country as all poor people of color combined.
I can't deny historic discrimination against POC, but to deny such acts against many white Americans, historically and now is ignorant to say the least. But the reality is we live in an overall tolerant country, albeit with structural economic issues that must be solved for the benefit of all. It's high time we move past race if we intend on solving any of these issues.
49
@Joshua I've severed on several admissions committees as faculty at multiple institutions in the US. It is more complicated than just looking at the race of the URM (underrepresented minority). We look at things like whether the person is the first to go to college, their background (which is given in their personal statement), etc. We've sometimes ranked down URMs who obviously know what they are doing (i.e., coming from a privileged background, members of family having attended college behavior, opportunities to do research, etc.) to put up others who obviously don't (people who are first to college aren't aware of certain dos and don'ts and if they don't have a mentor to guide them they tend to make some questionable choices which is reflected in their writing, class choices, etc.).
So it's not just race that's taken into account in college admissions. But it is a factor. I'd say the more important factor is actually economic background. The people who end up competing with each other are URMs vs. others with a difficult economic background. In those cases, the URMs are chosen.
10
It's funny, though not surprising, that you fail to mention the elephant under the bed.
The death of capitalism, the shredding of free markets, the political and financial corruption of our courts, the pressure to create a economic system (private finance: banking, investments) finely attuned to automatically funnel money to the already wealthy and corporate, wholesale destruction of the tax code to favor those with the most and allow them to remove much-needed resources from the larger economy.
That is, you fail to mention rich guys and corporations. We'll leave corrupt politicians (read: Republicans) out of this.
All these problems. All this trauma. All these social and financial and even racial difficulties would begin to make some sense, and lend themselves to solution, if the people involved were secure in their homes and their incomes and their health and their education and their futures.
Those are the things capitalism provides, and provides well. But we're no longer a capitalist nation. We labor under the fat thumb of increasing privilege. We're saddled with an upper and a corporate class that wants more than anything else to recreate the rent-seeking, luxury gulping, prejudice-addicted aristocracy our founders ran away from.
They would betray us all and turn us into eighteenth century England.
Like your NYT colleagues, you fail even to mention it; tossing us another racial red herring.
No porridge for you!
16
The questions asked here say more about the failings of neo-liberalism intellectually than anything else.
If you don’t realize this country was built on slave labor, and if you don’t understand how the architecture of American capitalism is based on exploiting labor, then I suppose you voted for Hillary and were surprised.
You’ll probably focus on the Trump horror show while watching your retirement accounts grow as the economy gains as carbon production increases. “My job is so demanding!” Vacationing in Fiji helps.
“AOC seems too radical.” Our progeny will look back at their ancestors with distain for our inability to pull out if our digital solipsism and face the environmental disaster we are creating as we fail to recognize that the wealth disparities we accept are the root of our distractions.
People are poor for structural reasons. Just as our lifestyles are fundamentally dependent on burning up the planet. I wish more would consider the connection.
22
The article is very well done, but veers off course when it says: "And of course, while poor white people may be hurt by class bias — which is real and must be addressed — they do not have to deal with racial bias, too. Or the legacy of slavery. Or redlining. Or a host of other institutional practices that have hurt people of color since the founding of America." While this is all true, it makes the same mistake that is so often made in the "white privilege" arguments. One group's suffering is not off-set by focusing on another group's suffering, and one individual's story is not less important because another individual has a different story. Few groups have experienced the tragedies of the Jews over the millennia, but that doesn't mean those other groups are somehow "fortunate", or that an individual with a history of domestic abuse should somehow suffer less because domestic abuse is not the Holocaust. It is statements like these, above, which have rightfully alienated poor and working class whites who are living in difficult circumstances, and why Trump became so understandably appealing with his divisive messages that actually recognized working class whites for the first time in a long time. Liberals in America need to understand that group data does not speak to or for the individual: Each person has his or her own reference, and dismissing that in order to focus on the hardships of a group only breeds a sense in the individual being dismissed.
101
Poor whites were alienated long before those statements for reasons that have nothing to do with those statements.
They chose to support ideas and structures of racial superiority and doomed themselves in the process. Why pay for what can be gotten for free by working someone to death.
But all chickens come home to roost. And with the titans of capitalism making it clear they no longer need such a large “white buffer” poor whites find themselves without cover.
6
The cult of the individual is at the root of the issue. An inability to separate group arguments from individual feelings is a failure that leads to Trump, as you intimate, as well as everything from the irrationality of anti-vaxxers, to assault rifle ownership, to Alabama’s recent assault on women. Blaming sociologists or historians for pointing out the group disparities is not the issue; more to the point is the continued surrender to the consumer and ever more clever addiction delivery systems to the cult of personality.
Bootstraps are worthless in so much as they do nearly nothing to solve structure problems that overwhelm personal willpower. Ohio and the other swing states that fell to Trump are mired in the ideology of white privilege and self-celebration. We are not going to get out of our mess with super-free markets or volunteerism. Some sort of coercion, based on rationality and a higher collective purpose is called for. Let’s start with much higher marginal tax rates on the top 1 or .1 percent. And let’s invest that on all poor black, white and American.
7
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I grew up poor, and I’ve supported myself since I was 14. Think about that for a minute — at 14 I went to school, worked, and found myself places to live and sleep. You know those jobs that people say Americans are too good to do, or don’t want to work that hard? I did them, the hardest being labor on a tobacco farm.
When I read that I’m privileged because I am white, my heart hears that the hunger of a child matters less because that child is white. I rarely cry for the hungry little girl I was, but this article brought tears to my eyes.
55
Universal basic income (guaranteed income) is simply not feasible for financial and political reasons.
The limited test trials in Europe have been terminated early because they have been shown to be far too expensive to be scaled up to entire countries. Further, voters are inclined to replace politicians who give additional taxpayer money to people who do not work and who often spend the extra income on fast food, liquor, drugs and frivolous items.
A recent study in the UK, sponsored by unions, pointed out that if government spends billions or trillions of additional dollars giving basic income to poor people, less money would be available to improve the wages of working people (union members, especially government employees).
Free everything, including guaranteed income, for everyone is a socialist dream but a prescription for economic catastrophe.
21
@Mon Ray
Free money seems to be working pretty well for big Pharma, big Agra, the industrial military complex — corporations, in general. What was the recent meme about corporations with billion dollars profits? Was it they they paid zero taxes and in some cases even had negative taxes, which I believe means they were paid back?!?
Everything comes at a cost. The vast majority of us pay to maintain our living spaces, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on whether we own or rent. Those are just our secondary homes. Our other homes are our country and our planet, both of which have fallen into sad disrepair. Most of us are throwing money at those two to little avail. They can’t catch any of it.
All those corporations are like hydra, lots of arms to catch all that money we’re throwing.
Please don’t write, “We can’t afford” unless you tack “big corporations” onto the end of the sentence.
29
@Lori
Add to your reply that the U.K., when the Conservatives last gained power (in 2010), chose to cut taxes for rich people and companies and impose austerity on the poor and working class.
8
Guranted income vs the economic model of Norway is an interesting subject. The people of Norway are happiest in the world and a large amount of money coming from North Sea oil is the main reason for this. The two questions comes out of this experiment - (1) how to generate additional revenue to create social happiness, (2) what is the best way to use that money for social projects. People wants to have a decent living standard not money only and that standard includes decent housing, decent education, decent healthcare, necessary foods, energy and internet and communication services for comport and entertainment. Most of these wants can be supported by government programs and only a small amount of expenditure can be personalized. These personalized expenditure can be guaranteed income. I hope we will find the right mix of government programs and guaranteed income make the citizens happy and fulfilled in their life. The technology has made us so powerful, we should be able to do that by controlling the greed and selfishness in ourself.
3
@Kalyan Basu I think they don't get it until retirement and then while working taxes are about 90% of income. the $2,000. for alaskans sure make car payments and fuel much easier ,then you can make more money.
Ms. Martin greatly oversimplifies the complex factors which have led to the current disparities in income and wealth between various groups in American society. She sees only the world of black vs. white and does no more than pay lip service to other groups, disadvantaged either because of their ethnicity (asians, latinos and native americans) or due to socio-economic factors (poor whites). In particular, she utterly fails to address two key points: first, given that black society is hetrogenous too, what are the underlying reasons why some blacks are much better off than others? What lessons can be learned from this? And second, what progress has been made since the civil war in terms of the overall well being, financial and otherwise, of U.S. blacks in general and how should this be taken into account in critically viewing the "racial wealth gap" as it now stands.
23
@nhfuller
I'm not following your second point. Yes, African-Americans have seen an improvement in living conditions since 1865 - as have ALL Americans. What matters, however, is relative conditions.
In 1967, the average black family earned 55% of that of the average white family. By 2011, that gap had only closed by 4 percentage points despite much larger improvements in high school and college graduation rates.
8
The lumping of all black citizens in the Af-Am moniker has concealed some still startling facts about the state of America descendants of slavery (Adosa) when compared to black immigrants.
Black as a label for people is no longer sufficient when talking policy and culture.
Adosa 2020 Census
2
All power is rooted in technology.
If the middle east, for example, was a beacon of advanced technology, do you really think Islamophobia would be as prevalent in America? Even the most ignorant bigots on the planet have to admire individuals belonging to ethnic minorities who have made substantial contributions to STEM fields. Stereotypes, such as "all Asians are smart" acknowledge this by easing one's own mathematical insecurity. It's a way of saying "I have no choice but to respect you because I couldn't do nearly what you can do".
Culture, on the other hand, does not automatically translate into power. There can only be so many Kanye Wests out there. The rest of us, who desire any sort of power or autonomy whatsoever, must acquire it through technological expertise. Collectively, America dominates STEM fields because our private sector is wealthy, our medical and legal professions are prestigious, and our institutions of higher education are highly desirable. It's the perfect storm for massive success.
6
every single time, every single article on wealth gap and disparities of any kind, these same questions appear in the comment sections, spewing the same lazy tropes.
the only thing it has taught me is that there is a very sizable segment of the population that cannot think deeply about the past or future and is devoid of compassion or empathy.
51
@JA Interesting. Which comments are "tropes" and how do you specifically refute them? Disagreeing with you doesn't mean "unable to think deeply." How insulting and condescending. Almost Trump-like!
2
Thank you. These simple facts are so far removed from culture war obsessed Americans that we remain divided and vulnerable to the cheap cons of the economic elite —and to the foreign hostile powers that have learned to exploit these fissures.
9
In any case, no group of people in the entire history of the human race has ever voluntarily given up wealth and power. "What we have, we hold" was lettered across shields in the Middle Ages, and that pretty much sums it up.
So if you want to obtain wealth, you're going to have to go out and get it for yourself somehow. That's why the US economy is a large-scale rat race. That the fastest rats are very fast indeed, no one can doubt.
22
@Jonathan
Yes, right. And THAT is why we passed a Constitutional Amendment allowing for a graduated income tax. Because people will never give up wealth voluntarily, government uses its power and authority as representing the interest of the people as a whole to levy taxes.
So, to give the very poorest people some help to at least GET STARTED in the rat race, surely we could imagine some assistance as in the interest of the people.
Not that that has to be a basic income, mind you, but some help to even be able to start in the race.
37
@Bryan - An income tax is a tax on just that, income. It will speed up the circulation of money, but that will only make those at the top richer.
Now what happens when we tax high incomes, and give out to those at the bottom? The people at the bottom immediately spend the money, and goes right back to the wealthy. With every round-trip, the capitalist class takes a cut and adds it to their capital stock. The faster the money goes round and round, the richer the capitalists get.
2
"Angelique Evans...was paid 13 cents an hour in prison in California for cooking seven hours a day. She would get paid once a month, with 55 percent of her wages garnished."
Even though I'm thousands of miles from California, I was ashamed to read this. I did the arithmetic, folks, and calculated that Evans nets 5.85 cents per hour, or 41 cents a day for her work in the kitchen.
Please, somebody send this to Gov. Newsom and hope that he has enough spine to correct this injustice.
53
@LarryAt27N
I think, in principle, it's wrong to make prison money-making for convicts, particularly serious criminals. Prison should be, well, prison. Not normal life that just happens to be behind bars.
1
“Indeed, 66 percent of Asian-Americans are foreign-born, meaning they are dealing with a legacy of whatever structural disadvantage was rooted in their country of origin and the economic implications of immigration. But, in most cases, those are of a different order than a legacy of genocide or slavery.”
This is a gross understatement of the extreme challenges many Asians have faced in the last century ranging from genocide (yes, genocide, in Cambodia) to the Vietnam War to Hiroshima to the millions of women in sex or domestic slavery. Why is it so important for many progressives to downplay this suffering and act like it’s less important than the horrible legacy of slavery in the US?
86
@Liz
I agree that there's a lack of detail here, but at least the author is acknowledging there are a different disadvantages that are legacies from other cultures as well as our own.
Would the article be better if it included your second paragraph? Probably. But would it change the main argument that much? I don't think so.
6
@Liz
This is what happens when you take a valid premise ("Historical oppression has adverse effects that can last generations") and turn it into a reductionist equation ("The greater the oppression, the greater the effect").
If Asian Americans seem to be doing well relative to other people of color, and even to whites in some cases, then by definition the Cambodian genocide, Vietnam War, Cultural Revolution, etc weren't THAT bad. Q.E.D.
I find this type of argument to frankly be much more offensive than the "model minority" one used by conservatives to explain Asian American success.
31
@Liz
The real answer is that most of the Asian Americans, particularly the Indians, are extremely highly qualified and not the "average Asian". Of course if you cherry pick the best Asians and bring them to your country, they will look like a hotbed of education, progress and wealth. I think the analysis should be split between people who are (i) non-white (I refuse to use the nonsensical "POC") but born American and (ii) people who are non-white and actually are immigrants.
3