Another terrific post. And the Biden Rescue Plan Act deserves even more attention for a couple of absurdities that were not mentioned. First, it discriminated not just against white men, but all Chinese Americans − perhaps due to the “Wuhan Virus”? Who’s in the White House now?
And second, it covers “economically disadvantaged” millionaires -- as long as they are not white or Chinese.
As Jilani notes, the Asians it covers are “Asian Pacific Americans; or Subcontinent Asian Americans.” That’s an oddly complicated way of saying “Asians.” And the reason is that “Subcontinent Asian Americans” is a term the U.C. Government uses to mean those ”whose origins are in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, or Nepal.” That very carefully excludes China. Ironically, in the US, median household income is $85,000 for Chinese Americans, $66,000 for whites, and $126,000 for Indian-Americans!
But to get special treatment you need to be both “socially AND economically” disadvantaged. So maybe that takes care of the bizarre bias favoring Indians over Chinese? Not at all. “In assessing economic disadvantage, the “SBA will look at whether the net worth of the individual claiming disadvantage is less than $750,000.” And that excludes the value of the “disadvantaged” person’s home and partial ownership of the business requesting the handout.
Income is distributed considerably less equally within the Black and Asian populations than within the White population, and what this Rescue Plan does, is to rescue those who are more affluent than most people Black people, most Asians, and most everybody.
I am afraid I disagree with this, though I wish it were so. We merely need to look at how the GI Bill after WWII helped Whites go to college but did not help Blacks. My father went to college and so did all my brothers. He was the first and we followed. Blacks were systematically excluded from southern colleges since post WWII Jim Crow was still the standard. So Blacks simply lost out on generational benefit of advanced education and consequent wealth. https://www.militarytimes.com/military-honor/salute-veterans/2019/11/10/the-gi-bill-shouldve-been-race-neutral-politicos-made-sure-it-wasnt/
The problem with this is there is still a generalization being made based on ancestry or the past. You don't have to do any generalizing at all -- you can look at the current status of people based on socioeconomics and base policy on that. If you simply generalized, you may never guess that the county with the worst male life expectancy in America around 2015 was McDowell County in West Virginia, which is overwhelmingly a white majority county. It doesn't matter a whole lot to me how people got to that status over time -- there are many forces including state sanctioned racism, yes, but other facts that led to people's current status, and we should be wary of measures that would point to the past but ignore the present.
Charles Murray makes this point splendidly in his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I do not disagree on this point at all. White working class America is absolutely collapsing in despair. Deaths of despair across rural white America, as Sinchan below writes, are horrifying. I live in Southwestern PA, I see it daily. My only point is race also matters. And we need policies that correct the classism that is crushing both poor whites and poor blacks. We currently have awful policies that merely insight racism for the advantage of politicians. Imagine if rural poor whites and urban poor blacks could see what they have in common and voted that way.
And it's exactly the political leadership in both parties that obscure what poor/working class whites and urban blacks have in common. That's why the new crop of 'anti-racists' are dangerous. For them to insist that all whites are complicit in 'white supremacy' is divisive. W.E.B. DuBois very mourned how poor white during slavery were hired by the plantation owners to oversee slaves, track down runaways, etc. So they identified with the slaveowners over race instead of identifying with freed slaves during reconstruction as exploited 'free labor' in a rising industrial nation. The ability of politicians and the business classes to keep people divided by race and ethnicity is a by-product of a multi-cultural society we live in.
You are 100% right about past unfairness. But that is not a reason to now be unfair to the relatives of those who were not treated unfairly in the past (and of course many whites were treated unfairly in the past, but for different reasons). It's just a matter of that simple truism -- two wrongs don't make a right.
If we rescue those who now need rescuing regardless of their ancestry, we will not replicate unfairness now, and we disproportionately (by a very large margin) help those whose ancestors were harmed.
Also, treating those unfairly who are needed to help solve the problem, is not the way to get things done.
Racial discrimination, either in the public or private sector, was outlawed in this country 58 years ago by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and "affirmative action" double standards giving Black applicants preference in hiring, promotion, and college admission over white applicants who are better-qualified according to the ordinary criteria of selection was first instituted by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s and subsequently expanded. Discrimination in the Jim Crow era may have had a lingering effect on Blacks born after 1964 or after the inception of affirmative action, but what percent of current US residents of Asian ancestry are descendants of people who graduated from college in the US in the late 1940s, the 1950s, or 1960s? Not a very large percent, I daresay. Yet on average, current US residents of Asian ancestry have higher average net worth than than Whites. The same was and is also true of second- and third-generation US Jews whose immigrant parents or grandparents had no college degrees.
Starting with the understanding that there is no perfect system, your comments misses the role of family wealth in driving social and racial inequality. In Boston, where I live, the average white person is worth $244,000 while the average black person is worth $8. For those of us who can trace the history of this inequality from at least Reconstruction and Federal policies through the 1900's, this inequality in family wealth is why a process that uses race as part of the decision making process has actuarial validity. For example, I have a son who, at times, can qualify for social benefits. I, on the other hand, have enough wealth to support him through those times. This is not the case for the average black, latinx, or First Nation family. That is what race has to do with it.
Second, are we sure that America's history (brutal as it is) is the only explanation of the racial wealth gap? Or maybe it is only one of the major reasons? Please read this great article by Coleman Hughes.
Third, controlling for parent's socio-economic status, the income of black women is now equal to that of white women. But it is very different for black men There seems to be more going on here than just race. Fourth, even if I concede your point that more black people are poor due to a history of racism that they suffered, this is not an argument against a race-neutral policy. Because to the extent that you are right, those poor black people should anyway benefit from a policy that aimed to benefit all poor people. But the advantage is that such a race-neutral policy will be more acceptable to people of all races and therefore it will have a greater chance of being enacted.
“who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias as a member of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”
Who has a better right to claim that nowadays than white men? They belong to a group that is more openly and pervasively stigmatized -- by media reporters and pundits, educators, and corporate gatekeepers, among others -- than any other in the US.
The data on family wealth does not support your claim of effective discrimination. It is true that behavior historically attributed to white men has fallen out of favor. The data on access to wealth does not yet suggest this has led to any limitation on their opportunities.
I am not sure - which data are we talking about? Angus Deaton (an Economics Nobel Laureate) did extensive research on deprivation among low income white communities in rural America. What he called "the deaths of despair" was so extensive in this community, that it had lowered the life expectancy for middle aged white people in America as a whole, a highly unusual development. We started paying attention to this problem and the despair/joblessness/poverty that is there in rural/small town America only after something so extraordinary was documented. Journalists had a reluctance to talk about this problem. Please read his book "Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism". Of course, black people also live in rural/small town America and they suffered as well, so it is not just white people. But I feel (even as a foreigner) that many American liberals (especially people working in liberal media) harbour a special contempt for such people. And it is totally ok to make fun of such people and denigrate their values. This is morally unacceptable.
There is no need to deduce the existence of "affirmative action" from data on average income or net worth. It undeniably exists, is required by state and Federal government mandates, and is pervasively practiced without denial or apology by college admission officers and corporate and civil service managers responsible for white-collar hiring and promotion. If average Black net worth lags behind average White net worth it is not because there is no pro-Black "affirmative action" but despite the fact that there is.
You're taking it for granted that differences in average net worth between certain groups (excluding people of Asian ancestry) sorted by race, sex, and/or ethnicity are primarily due to racial, sexual, or ethnic discrimination -- which shouldn't be taken for granted.
Anyway, this much is obvious: the only truly pervasive and systematic discrimination in this country at present -- in white-collar hiring and promotion and college admission, widely and openly practiced in the private sector and mandated by Federal and state governments -- goes by the name of "affirmative action" and operates against white men and men of Asian ancestry and to the advantage of people who are Black, Hispanic-surnamed, or "native American," and doubly so for people in those categories who are female.
William I agree with you "affirmative action" type policies are indeed racist and I would contend socially destructive since they create enormous dissension between equally needy people. The problem is race does matter, and we simply have not found the sorts of policies that can both remedy the generational harm of racism and simultaneously recognize that poverty cuts all colors. Classism is the biggest social problem, but racism serves as a token to pretend to solve it. I think we need much more creative policies than mere racist policies. But I am afraid lazy cynical politicians on the right and the left are unwilling to do this. Race baiting wins elections not good public policy.
Another terrific post. And the Biden Rescue Plan Act deserves even more attention for a couple of absurdities that were not mentioned. First, it discriminated not just against white men, but all Chinese Americans − perhaps due to the “Wuhan Virus”? Who’s in the White House now?
And second, it covers “economically disadvantaged” millionaires -- as long as they are not white or Chinese.
As Jilani notes, the Asians it covers are “Asian Pacific Americans; or Subcontinent Asian Americans.” That’s an oddly complicated way of saying “Asians.” And the reason is that “Subcontinent Asian Americans” is a term the U.C. Government uses to mean those ”whose origins are in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, or Nepal.” That very carefully excludes China. Ironically, in the US, median household income is $85,000 for Chinese Americans, $66,000 for whites, and $126,000 for Indian-Americans!
But to get special treatment you need to be both “socially AND economically” disadvantaged. So maybe that takes care of the bizarre bias favoring Indians over Chinese? Not at all. “In assessing economic disadvantage, the “SBA will look at whether the net worth of the individual claiming disadvantage is less than $750,000.” And that excludes the value of the “disadvantaged” person’s home and partial ownership of the business requesting the handout.
Income is distributed considerably less equally within the Black and Asian populations than within the White population, and what this Rescue Plan does, is to rescue those who are more affluent than most people Black people, most Asians, and most everybody.
I am afraid I disagree with this, though I wish it were so. We merely need to look at how the GI Bill after WWII helped Whites go to college but did not help Blacks. My father went to college and so did all my brothers. He was the first and we followed. Blacks were systematically excluded from southern colleges since post WWII Jim Crow was still the standard. So Blacks simply lost out on generational benefit of advanced education and consequent wealth. https://www.militarytimes.com/military-honor/salute-veterans/2019/11/10/the-gi-bill-shouldve-been-race-neutral-politicos-made-sure-it-wasnt/
The problem with this is there is still a generalization being made based on ancestry or the past. You don't have to do any generalizing at all -- you can look at the current status of people based on socioeconomics and base policy on that. If you simply generalized, you may never guess that the county with the worst male life expectancy in America around 2015 was McDowell County in West Virginia, which is overwhelmingly a white majority county. It doesn't matter a whole lot to me how people got to that status over time -- there are many forces including state sanctioned racism, yes, but other facts that led to people's current status, and we should be wary of measures that would point to the past but ignore the present.
Charles Murray makes this point splendidly in his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I do not disagree on this point at all. White working class America is absolutely collapsing in despair. Deaths of despair across rural white America, as Sinchan below writes, are horrifying. I live in Southwestern PA, I see it daily. My only point is race also matters. And we need policies that correct the classism that is crushing both poor whites and poor blacks. We currently have awful policies that merely insight racism for the advantage of politicians. Imagine if rural poor whites and urban poor blacks could see what they have in common and voted that way.
And it's exactly the political leadership in both parties that obscure what poor/working class whites and urban blacks have in common. That's why the new crop of 'anti-racists' are dangerous. For them to insist that all whites are complicit in 'white supremacy' is divisive. W.E.B. DuBois very mourned how poor white during slavery were hired by the plantation owners to oversee slaves, track down runaways, etc. So they identified with the slaveowners over race instead of identifying with freed slaves during reconstruction as exploited 'free labor' in a rising industrial nation. The ability of politicians and the business classes to keep people divided by race and ethnicity is a by-product of a multi-cultural society we live in.
You are 100% right about past unfairness. But that is not a reason to now be unfair to the relatives of those who were not treated unfairly in the past (and of course many whites were treated unfairly in the past, but for different reasons). It's just a matter of that simple truism -- two wrongs don't make a right.
If we rescue those who now need rescuing regardless of their ancestry, we will not replicate unfairness now, and we disproportionately (by a very large margin) help those whose ancestors were harmed.
Also, treating those unfairly who are needed to help solve the problem, is not the way to get things done.
Racial discrimination, either in the public or private sector, was outlawed in this country 58 years ago by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and "affirmative action" double standards giving Black applicants preference in hiring, promotion, and college admission over white applicants who are better-qualified according to the ordinary criteria of selection was first instituted by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s and subsequently expanded. Discrimination in the Jim Crow era may have had a lingering effect on Blacks born after 1964 or after the inception of affirmative action, but what percent of current US residents of Asian ancestry are descendants of people who graduated from college in the US in the late 1940s, the 1950s, or 1960s? Not a very large percent, I daresay. Yet on average, current US residents of Asian ancestry have higher average net worth than than Whites. The same was and is also true of second- and third-generation US Jews whose immigrant parents or grandparents had no college degrees.
Starting with the understanding that there is no perfect system, your comments misses the role of family wealth in driving social and racial inequality. In Boston, where I live, the average white person is worth $244,000 while the average black person is worth $8. For those of us who can trace the history of this inequality from at least Reconstruction and Federal policies through the 1900's, this inequality in family wealth is why a process that uses race as part of the decision making process has actuarial validity. For example, I have a son who, at times, can qualify for social benefits. I, on the other hand, have enough wealth to support him through those times. This is not the case for the average black, latinx, or First Nation family. That is what race has to do with it.
A few points. First, most white families don't have much wealth at all. The racial wealth gap is mostly about class, as Matt Yglesias argues
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-racial-wealth-gap-is-a-class
Second, are we sure that America's history (brutal as it is) is the only explanation of the racial wealth gap? Or maybe it is only one of the major reasons? Please read this great article by Coleman Hughes.
https://quillette.com/2018/07/19/black-american-culture-and-the-racial-wealth-gap/
Third, controlling for parent's socio-economic status, the income of black women is now equal to that of white women. But it is very different for black men There seems to be more going on here than just race. Fourth, even if I concede your point that more black people are poor due to a history of racism that they suffered, this is not an argument against a race-neutral policy. Because to the extent that you are right, those poor black people should anyway benefit from a policy that aimed to benefit all poor people. But the advantage is that such a race-neutral policy will be more acceptable to people of all races and therefore it will have a greater chance of being enacted.
“who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias as a member of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”
Who has a better right to claim that nowadays than white men? They belong to a group that is more openly and pervasively stigmatized -- by media reporters and pundits, educators, and corporate gatekeepers, among others -- than any other in the US.
The data on family wealth does not support your claim of effective discrimination. It is true that behavior historically attributed to white men has fallen out of favor. The data on access to wealth does not yet suggest this has led to any limitation on their opportunities.
I am not sure - which data are we talking about? Angus Deaton (an Economics Nobel Laureate) did extensive research on deprivation among low income white communities in rural America. What he called "the deaths of despair" was so extensive in this community, that it had lowered the life expectancy for middle aged white people in America as a whole, a highly unusual development. We started paying attention to this problem and the despair/joblessness/poverty that is there in rural/small town America only after something so extraordinary was documented. Journalists had a reluctance to talk about this problem. Please read his book "Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism". Of course, black people also live in rural/small town America and they suffered as well, so it is not just white people. But I feel (even as a foreigner) that many American liberals (especially people working in liberal media) harbour a special contempt for such people. And it is totally ok to make fun of such people and denigrate their values. This is morally unacceptable.
There is no need to deduce the existence of "affirmative action" from data on average income or net worth. It undeniably exists, is required by state and Federal government mandates, and is pervasively practiced without denial or apology by college admission officers and corporate and civil service managers responsible for white-collar hiring and promotion. If average Black net worth lags behind average White net worth it is not because there is no pro-Black "affirmative action" but despite the fact that there is.
You're taking it for granted that differences in average net worth between certain groups (excluding people of Asian ancestry) sorted by race, sex, and/or ethnicity are primarily due to racial, sexual, or ethnic discrimination -- which shouldn't be taken for granted.
Anyway, this much is obvious: the only truly pervasive and systematic discrimination in this country at present -- in white-collar hiring and promotion and college admission, widely and openly practiced in the private sector and mandated by Federal and state governments -- goes by the name of "affirmative action" and operates against white men and men of Asian ancestry and to the advantage of people who are Black, Hispanic-surnamed, or "native American," and doubly so for people in those categories who are female.
William I agree with you "affirmative action" type policies are indeed racist and I would contend socially destructive since they create enormous dissension between equally needy people. The problem is race does matter, and we simply have not found the sorts of policies that can both remedy the generational harm of racism and simultaneously recognize that poverty cuts all colors. Classism is the biggest social problem, but racism serves as a token to pretend to solve it. I think we need much more creative policies than mere racist policies. But I am afraid lazy cynical politicians on the right and the left are unwilling to do this. Race baiting wins elections not good public policy.