The Three Bears Effect is the name given by Aiyo at the blog Black British Girl for how whites stereotype blacks and Asians as opposites while putting themselves in the middle as “just right” – like in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”.
For example, black men are stereotyped as having big penises but not much intelligence while Asian men are the other way round, leaving white men in the middle as “just right”.
It works so well in America that in most cases you can tell what the Asian stereotype will be by taking the opposite of the black one:
- If blacks are cool, then Asians are nerdy.
- If black women are disagreeable, overbearing and loud, then Asian women are sweet, submissive and quiet.
- If blacks are lazy, then Asians are hard working.
- If blacks have a lower IQ than whites, then Asians have a higher one.
- If blacks have a higher poverty rate than whites, then Asians have a lower one.
- If blacks have less education than whites, then Asians have more.
- If black women are “mannish”, then Asian women are “ultra-feminine”.
Etc.
It does not always work. For example, Asian Americans are not seen as truly American, but then neither are Black Americans. But in general it works surprisingly well. Too well.
White Americans think they are merely seeing the world as it is. But they do not know enough about blacks and Asians to make that claim. If they did:
- They would know that some of these statements are false, like about poverty rates, IQ and penis size.
- They would know that blacks and Asians are individuals just like whites are and cannot be stereotyped.
- They would know that among “blacks” and “Asians” there are all sorts. For example, Cambodian Americans drop out of high school at a higher rate than blacks, while black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies do better than Asian Americans.
They tend to notice the facts that support their stereotypes and overlook those that do not. It is called confirmation bias.
The main advantage of Three Bears thinking: it allows White Americans to think that they and their society are not racist. It allows them to say stuff like:
- “If Asians can do so well, then it is not racism that is holding back blacks.”
- “How can I be racist if I think Asians have more intelligence than whites?”
The answer:
- Asian Americans still face racism. For example, in spite of all their supposed hard work and intelligence, they still have higher rates of poverty than whites.
- Racism against blacks is even worse.
- Even a “good” racist stereotype is still racist: it judges people according to their race, not their personal merits – as Asians discover when they apply to top American universities.
By playing up Asians as the opposite of blacks, White Americans can tell themselves they are not racist while keeping their racist views about blacks untouched.
See also:
- Black British Girl: The Three Bears Effect
- prejudice
- stereotype
- I am shocked simply shocked – among those in America with a university degree, only blacks have a higher unemployment rate than Asian Americans.
- colour-blind racism
Abagond 
Aiyo got it right!
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This is awesome… and has crossed my mind in the past especially after a particularly nasty IQ test argument with a white liberal stereotype. Sh-t gets tiring.
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Excellet job – both of you!!!!
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Kudos on both posts!
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I wanted to share with readers of your blog what I commented on Aiyo’s (BBG’s) blog. In reply to a comment by a self-identified Asian man, I wrote:
I keep giving a flattering but not-so-conspicuous eye to Asian guys (Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Laotian, Indian — and I’m going to include Samoan and Filipino here). So I must be friggin’ hideous because they turn away. Forget about color; I don’t even have a preference of one ethnicity over another when it comes to men. Culturally speaking, I probably would have a better chance of communicating (in different ways) with Black American men. Then again, the world is changing. I wish that more Asian and Pacific-region men would give Black women worldwide more of a chance. We’re definitely not all overbearing, loud and (lol) mannish.
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Right on the money, again abagond and also Aiyo.
It is hard to understand why people can’t just accept one little thing: that it is really not ‘okay’ to stereotype. Every individual is different and unique.
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You know, I’m firmly convinced that anglos are not even concerned about ‘truth’. That is where the ‘reality train is derailed. What is important is that false-hoods, half-truths, and even lies net the highest gain imaginable for their objective(s).
Blacks have died for this country in numbers didproportionate to their percentages, educated themselves, become educated in colleges here and abroad, become martyrs, walked uprigt for eons, spoke ‘correct’ english and eschewed ebonics, grown long hair, lost weight, had dermabrasions to reveal newer skin, become ‘hippi’s, vegans, appreciated heavy metal, travelled out of the U.S. and came back, betrayed ‘their people’, rejected 40 ounces and pork, and the muslims, and Farrakhan, wore straightened , permed, conked,hair, invested in the market, market funds, 401k’s, ran in marathons, maintained their weight, watched Lawrence Welk, shown disdain for ‘black culture’, and still were considered not ‘good enough’. ‘We’ have to be true to ourselves, live our lives, and develop and maintain progressive and collective communities.
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You know, I’m firmly convinced that anglos are not even concerned about ‘truth’. That is where the ‘reality train is derailed. What is important is that false-hoods, half-truths, and even lies net the highest gain imaginable for their objective(s).
Bingo!!!!
Awesome comment.
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Where did you get the information about Cambodian Americans and blacks from the West Indies?
Not that I doubt you, but getting the sources would be nice. I think that would be a good thing to start doing in your entries. 🙂
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*I like the header image. 🙂
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Never thought of it that way, though the obvious tones of Goldilocks crossed my mind as I got older.
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Did it occur to you that those patterns (what you call stereotypes) are all inextricable from each other?
The characteristics are generally true. What is up for debate is whether the societies of each group’s making is superior or preferable to the others.
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Stereotypes are definitely not patterns.
Stereotypes do not even qualify as information.
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Thank you, Aiyo and Abangond for this post.
It does not always work. For example, Asian Americans are not seen as truly American, but then neither are Black Americans.
Is this really true? I have never been to the US for an extended amount of time, so please do correct me if I’m wrong. However, to my knowledge, Black Americans are not assumed to be perpetual foreigners. They are not asked ‘Where do you really come from?’ if they tell someone a US state and city. People do not insult them by making fun of an accent/language from a country where many Black people hail from (whereas East Asians and South East Asians get the ‘ching, chong, ching!’ and ‘flied lice’). People also do not come up to random Black people and ask them to show them a ‘voodoo spell’ or how to say X in Swahili or something equally ridiculous (East and South East Asians get asked if they know special medicines or rituals from their country, kung fu/karate and how to say/write things in Chinese even if they are not Chinese). I am by no means saying that Black people are accepted as being 100% American, but from my observations it seems East Asians and South East Asians are perceived as being far more ‘foreign’ and ‘mysterious’ compared to Black people.
Even a “good” racist stereotype is still racist: it judges people according to their race, not their personal merits – as Asians discover when they apply to top American universities.
I’ve read that, apparently, top American universities limit the amount of Asian students they allow in. Even if they are Asian American.
A lot of White Canadians don’t like ‘too many’ Asians in universities either: http://pastebin.ca/1987790 (the original)
They chose to edit the published version, which can be found here: http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/11/10/too-asian/
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Oyan that is soo true. I learned at the end of the racist American day, you have to just be you. Because regardless of the things you do to dismantle those stereotypes, those people will STILL maintain their perspective and that’s okay with me. I know and God knows my heart, he recognizes he did not create a foul mouth, promiscuous women and anyone who attempts to force me to believe that about myself will DEFINITELY have to answer to God.
It’s our responsibility to use all of this negative publicity to our advantage.
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…”Black Americans are not assumed to be perpetual foreigners. They are not asked ‘Where do you really come from?’ if they tell someone a US state and city. People do not insult them by making fun of an accent/language from a country where many Black people hail from…. ….People also do not come up to random Black people and ask them to show them a ‘voodoo spell’ or how to say X in Swahili or something equally ridiculous (East and South East Asians get asked if they know special medicines or rituals from their country, kung fu/karate and how to say/write things in Chinese even if they are not Chinese). I am by no means saying that Black people are accepted as being 100% American, but from my observations it seems East Asians and South East Asians are perceived as being far more ‘foreign’ and ‘mysterious’ compared to Black people….” (Ella)
————————————————————————–
“Black Americans are not assumed to be perpetual foreigners.”
No, just perpetually inferior to everyone else.
The ‘Black in America’ series on CNN addresses our very ‘unique ‘otherness’/difference’. The weekly/daily medical alerts to blks having higher incidences/occurences of diabetes, breast/prostate cancer, blood pressure, poverty, can’t read/learn, in prison, beaten’killed by police,higher HIV/A.I.D.S, std’s . All of these mass media images/presentations are , about ‘our’ foreigness and social, personal and medical pathologies.
Yes blk people do get the ‘foreign treatment’; just in different ways. Yes they do. What do you think ‘we’ are talking about when ‘we’ complain about questions about ‘our’ hair/care? Ebonics? A propensity to ‘only’ eat watermelon, chicken, ‘red soda’, even though blks have been here for hundreds of years, right along side yts? I was thrown off of a commuter train (could’nt find my pass), and was asked to show some ID. I was like are you kidding me?! One of my associates burned her arm at work, (kitchen) and was informed that blk women have tougher skin, so what’s the problem. Not only are blk Americans treated many times as ‘less American’, ‘we’ are often treated as ‘less human’. Read about Los Angeles chief Darryl Gates, who when questioned as to why so many blk men were dying from the ‘choke-holds’, he replied that ‘blk necks were different’. Seriously? How many yts walk up to me inducating that I give the ‘five?
Sexual relations w/blks is still in many perspectives viewed as ‘more freaky/wild’, dancing more ‘uninhibited’ vs, precise/artful. There is much to discount your perception;and while I clearly understand your POV,
sometimes, it seems as if being a ‘foreigner’ provides many with a ‘honorary White’ pass/status. I am no way discrediting what many immigrants experience, but , the blk American experience is ‘unique’.
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In this regard I have a question: How do other minorities fit into this scheme? Which group is the polar opposite of native Americans? Or of Indians (or are they, not looking stereotypically Eastern-Asian, still part of the Asian group)? Or what about the Hispanic groups?
See, I have a certain problem with the three bears effect, as it picks two minorities and points only out how white Americans are being racist to them, ignoring the cases where they are being racist towards groups that don’t have polar opposites. Or, at least, that is how I understand it.
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Aren’t you stereotyping white people by saying that “white people stereotype black folks and asian folks in this-and-that manner”?
Are we to infer now that some stereotypes are ok (e.g. when they’re about white people), but not ok when they’re about non-white people?
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Yay I got kudos! go me 🙂 lol
@Oyan
“Blacks have different necks” ??? What kind of foolishness?
In the words of father:
“It is as if these people just like to spit in the face of logic and embrace stupidity.”
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Ella said:
“I am by no means saying that Black people are accepted as being 100% American, but from my observations it seems East Asians and South East Asians are perceived as being far more ‘foreign’ and ‘mysterious’ compared to Black people.”
True, but that does not fit the Three Bears pattern, putting whites in the middle, which is why I brought it up.
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Crissa said:
“Where did you get the information about Cambodian Americans and blacks from the West Indies?”
I read it over a year ago, but I will see if I can find it.
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zemo said:
“In this regard I have a question: How do other minorities fit into this scheme?”
They do not fit into it. It is just white people taking a race that seems to have done well for itself (but not as well as they like to imagine) to excuse their own racism against blacks. It is not about Asians – or even about blacks when you get down to it. It is about white people trying to feel good about themselves.
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Randy Garver said:
‘Aren’t you stereotyping white people by saying that “white people stereotype black folks and asian folks in this-and-that manner”?”
Unlike a racist stereotype, I am not saying that whites tend towards such behaviour because they were born that way. Nor am I even saying that ALL or even MOST whites do it – I have no idea – just that at least SOME whites do do it.
I do not know the race of all my commenters, so for all I know MOST whites on this thread see through this Three Bears stuff for the racist piece of brainlessness that it is. I certainly hope so. But sadly not all do. Like, say, Chuck.
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Aiyo said:
“In the words of father:
“It is as if these people just like to spit in the face of logic and embrace stupidity.””
A wise man.
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@ ‘Aiyo …”his dismissive response to concerns about excessive force by police employing “choke holds.” Gates attributed several deaths of people held in choke holds to the theory that “blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on ‘normal people.'”[15] (In his autobiography, Gates explained that he had been misquoted, saying that black people were more predisposed to vascular conditions and therefore less likely to have normally-functioning arteries.)
(no intent to derail thread topic)
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Interesting concept.
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@ Oyan
I agree with you. Yes, Black people are treated differently. There is no doubt that they are treated as inferior and sometimes even as ‘less than human’.
It appears as if you have assumed I meant to say ‘Black people are not treated like inferiors or others in America’. If this is the case, I said that Black people are not treated as if they always come from a foreign country, which is a different experience from being treated as an inferior or an other. One can still be treated as inferior or as an other without being treated as a perpetual foreigner. As you have illustrated in your post, this is the case with Black Americans. And my previous post was not an attempt to refute that at all as I agree with you.
My main point was that East Asians and South East Asians are stereotyped as always being foreigners (from an Asian country, it’s impossible they were born in the USA). Black people, on the other hand, are not stereotyped as being foreigners in this way even if they are treated as inferior and/or others. It is a different way of ostracising each of us. So, yes, we are both treated as others, but one is more in the literal ‘you don’t belong here’ way and the other is more of a ‘you’re different and therefore inferior’ kind of way. I hope that makes sense.
I also wanted to add I did not mention any of the things in my previous post to play a game of ‘oppression Olympics’. I only listed examples to illustrate my point. I apologise if it came across in that way.
@ Abagond
Okay, I understand that. I just thought it was referred to in the sense of ‘who belongs in America based on race’. In which case, East and South East Asians are treated as more foreign than Black people (they must have been born in Asia and are not American), whereas White Americans seem to be able to accept more easily that a Black person has been born and raised in the US, but may treat them as others in different ways (not in a ‘go back to your own country’ kind of way).
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Ella:
I agree that the perpetual foreigner stereotype is not applied to most blacks in America. But many whites still do not regard them as Real Americans. You see that for example in the Teabaggers who want to take back “our” country. You see it how Obama’s Americanness is doubted. You saw it in Katrina when the government at first acted as if Black New Orleans were some Third World country, not a part of America.
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Ella,
It rarely happens now but forty some years ago, outside the south and a few major cities, very few white people ever saw a Black person. They might be aware of Jackie Robinson or Nat Cole. We were the proverbial foreigner when they did encounter you? They would ask questions that a southern white person would never ask. You might as well been in Germany after the war.
Their world was isolated from Black people and it was almost like Blacks didn’t exist in America.
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We’re headed down a slippery slope here so I’d rather get the consensus viewpoint right out in the open.
I’d ask you all, what do you make of comments by men like Rev. Jackson who basically said that black men on the street scare him? What do you make of old white women who clutch their purses when they walk near black men? At what point is it OK to stereotype out of safety concerns?
I understand the argument. White people perpetuate the very same behavior they attribute to blacks because of their stereotypes, but the question becomes, who should change their behavior first? Should white people just wrecklessly abandon their instinct towards playing the odds, or should black people accept that they tend to engage in criminal behavior moreso than people of other races which lends fuel to that fire?
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Stereotypes are based more on fear, misunderstanding, and ignorance than reality. Take the recent wave of Islamophobia in our country that causes normally level-headed people like Juan Williams and the ADL to act a fool, neverminding that most Muslims aren’t terrorists. (Duh!)
Stuff like this happens all the time, but confirmation bias (one of those lovely little terms) prevents most people from noticing it, or if they do notice, then they end up dismissing it.
When it comes to topics like safety, why is that we forget these kinds of things? Is it okay to stereotype when we’re afraid? (As the TSA is attempting to do with Sikhs and their turbans.) That’s like saying is it okay to hit somebody because you didn’t seem them and they surprised you. <— The logic does not follow.
And even more interesting is how these concerns about safety and the subsequent rules that follow never seem to offend, infringe or overly inconvenience WASPs in our country. Rules to increase safety in a climate of fear have historically always been enforced upon The Other. Whether that other is Black people, Muslims, Jews, Hispanic/Latinos, etc, the stereotype mentality eventually allows people to categorize Others to avoid being afraid of their fundamental difference from themselves.
Which is why The Three Bears Effect happens.
But when someone starts asking people of said group to acknowledge the outliers that fuel the stereotypes, why is it that they don't ask their own group to acknowledge the outliers (and majority as well, as it often occurs) in their own group that fuel stereotypes of oppression, intolerance, hatred, racism, sexism, etc. The mirror only seems to work one-way with stereotypes in our country, and that's a sad fact of life that should be changed. And from my small corner, it does seem to be doing that… albeit very, very slowly.
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@Chuck
Bullshit. Blacks don’t commit more crimes than whites in the USA. They get more often into jail when they do (and sometimes even when they haven’t), but they aren’t the slightest bit more criminal.
What you basically point out here is that either white people do the thing where they actually don’t buy into the scaremongering the media engages in because there always HAS to be a bad guy in any story, and those black people are already black so yeah, they will do.
OR the blacks start inventing a way where the non-criminal majority figures out a way to become negatively criminal, to level out the comparatively less crimes committed by other black people. All the while whites can just continue acting like they want.
So, in saying:
Should white people just wrecklessly abandon their instinct towards playing the odds, or should black people accept that they tend to engage in criminal behavior moreso than people of other races which lends fuel to that fire?
You actually ask “Should whites work on their perception of other human beings, or rather trust in letting those human beings do the humanly impossible to CONVINCE them that they are human beings, and not just walking crime statistics?”
I’d say the answer is fairly easy.
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@Chuck —
We’re headed down a slippery slope here so I’d rather get the consensus viewpoint right out in the open.
Talking about the questions you asked is always going to be a slippery slope because there has never been an HONEST conversation about race in America. I don’t think that most whites have ever admitted that they’ve benefited a whole lot at the expense of blacks for hundreds of years in the U.S. and in all kinds of ways.
We talk about these issues a lot in a group I belong to at school. I’ve been trying for years to get answers to certain questions because of my family. In my family, there are a bunch of white looking people. We all have “black blood” but some of us came out extremely white looking. Those who are white looking have benefited because of the complexion. Some of those benefits like land and education were gotten at the expense of some of the darker family members because they didn’t have the education or know-how to hang onto what was theirs. Almost all of us lighter ones have been more successful in life than the darker family members. The dark family members don’t usually like to come to family gatherings and the lighter family members pretend they don’t know why. 🙂 Holidays are so stressful. It’s all so fake.
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@Ella,
I am not interested in playing the ‘Oppression Olympics’ either. And, yes, Black Americans are treated as ‘foreigners in their own country, “Go back to Africa’ has a purpose.
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this is a good post i never thought about it this way but it makes sense
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That racist Charles Murray did it too in that book that won’t die, The Bell Curve. Like, “We’re not racists if we ‘point out’ that blacks aren’t as smart as whites, cuz see, we’re ALSO saying Asians are smarter than whites!”
Ugh in my mug, dude.
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I think many of the positive stereotypes of Asians (specifically Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) have a great deal of truth to them. Asians do excel in a variety of challenging fields at high rates. I think this is due to work ethic, strong orientation to family, etc. rooted in Confucianism and other traditional cultural patterns. I don’t think stereotypes should be dismissed. They often point to real problems and successes and critically thinking about why they exist can lead to real improvement over time.
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zemo:
Blacks are 6.6 times more likely to be the victims of murder and about 7.6 times more likely to be the perpetrators.
Per capita, blacks commit more violent crime than whites. And, in fact, black people commit a higher absolute number of murders than white people each year. On top of that, black people kill more white people than the reverse.
So I’m curious how you can say that blacks aren’t the slightest bit more criminal. In per capita terms they are, and on some measures they commit a higher absolute number of crimes. Especially as it pertains to violent crime – murder, rape, and robbery.
Click to access Homicide.pdf
I can also employ my personal experiences which make me much more weary of being around groups of blacks compared to whites. I’ve been jumped by a group of black guys. My brother has too. The only murder that has taken place in my hometown in Texas in recent memory was a white Air force guy whose son was in my class at school who worked the night shift at a gas station who got murdered by a group of blacks trying to rob the store. I saw a black man threaten to kill a white man in a McDonalds drive through because the white man asked the black man to move his car. I saw a black woman pull up behind a white woman and threaten to shoot her because the white woman honked at her in traffic. Another friend of mine had a home invasion occur; three blacks were involved; one of them held a gun to my friend’s girlfriend’s head; my friend actually blasted one of the invaders in the chest with a shotgun.
You can call that confirmation bias all that you want. But let me say that I’ve never been jumped by a group of whites, neither has my brother. Nobody in my hometown has been murdered by a white person, even though the town is 90% white. I’ve never witnessed a person having their life threatened at a fast food joint, and when there was no alcohol involved. Nobody I know has ever had their home invaded by a white person.
Please explain this away Zemo.
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FG says,
I think many of the positive stereotypes of Asians (specifically Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) have a great deal of truth to them. Asians do excel in a variety of challenging fields at high rates. I think this is due to work ethic, strong orientation to family, etc. rooted in Confucianism and other traditional cultural patterns. I don’t think stereotypes should be dismissed. They often point to real problems and successes and critically thinking about why they exist can lead to real improvement over time.
laromana says,
FG, the STEREOTYPE that says that if someone is ASIAN they’re AUTOMATICALLY SMARTER than a NON-ASIAN IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE, ACCURATE or BASED ON FACT.
They’re are INTELLIGENT and NON-INTELLIGENT INDIVIDUALS in EVERY RACE.
To claim that ONE CERTAIN RACE has a MONOPOLY on INTELLIGENCE is RACIST.
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jorbia says,
jorbia
@Chuck –
We’re headed down a slippery slope here so I’d rather get the consensus viewpoint right out in the open.
Talking about the questions you asked is always going to be a slippery slope because there has never been an HONEST conversation about race in America. I don’t think that most whites have ever admitted that they’ve benefited a whole lot at the expense of blacks for hundreds of years in the U.S. and in all kinds of ways.
laromana says,
jorbia thanks for pointing out this OBVIOUS but CRITICAL fact to C.
It’s always fascinating to see how well SOME BLACKS, LATINOS, WOMEN and other “MINORITIES” PERFORM/HAVE PERFORMED in NON-TRADITIONAL AREAS (eg. Math, Science, Technology, etc.) when they have EQUAL ACCESS to the SAME OPPORTUNITIES in these fields that WHITES/MEN have.
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@Laromana–
jorbia thanks for pointing out this OBVIOUS but CRITICAL fact to C.
It’s always fascinating to see how well SOME BLACKS, LATINOS, WOMEN and other “MINORITIES” PERFORM/HAVE PERFORMED in NON-TRADITIONAL AREAS (eg. Math, Science, Technology, etc.) when they have EQUAL ACCESS to the SAME OPPORTUNITIES in these fields that WHITES/MEN have.
Yes, Laromana, having access and no obstacles over generations enables ANY group of people to advance in leaps and bounds whereas lack of access and being hindered by many obstacles over generations retards the rate of ANY people moving ahead. This is so simple, but people try to make it confusing. It’s so dishonest. They hide behind long-winded explanations, twisted historical “facts,” fake science, invalid/selective research, and so on.
But I also hate it when unmotivated blacks use the past as an excuse or crutch. I think that blacks should look at it from the angle of what is it going to take to move ahead in 2010. If it takes a stronger work ethic and strong family orientation, then blacks need to figure out how to implement those ASAP, that is if most blacks plan to stay together as a group. If the biggest portion of blacks don’t care about doing anything significant to push their group toward progress, then individual blacks need to accept that and figure out how to put distance between them and others in the group ASAP. This is why I hate it when blacks uphold the complexion hierarchy. It makes it so much harder for the black group to make progress.
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Abagond,
I would like to challenge the idea that this “3 bears” paradigm is a uniquely white perspective.
Imagine that you gave the following survey to 1000 random white people, black people, and asian people:
“1. Rank the following in order of nerdiness: white, black, asian, or no difference”
“2. Rank the following in order of penis size: white, black, asian, or no difference”
“3. Which movie theater is likely to have a louder audience: a theater in a mostly black neighborhood, a theater in a mostly asian neighborhood, or no difference?”
I would bet that the resultant rankings would probably be the same regardless of the race of the survey participant. I’d also guess that you’d get the same results in the US, China, or Nigeria.
I’m not commenting on the underlying accuracy of these stereotypes, just on the proposed universality of such beliefs.
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@Randy Garver:
Because of the lock on the media, and substantial influence internationally, white American stereotypes usually become normative for the rest of us. People worldwide who have never even had exposure to the minorities in question are imbued by these images.
This was even true way before the present day information explosion. White residents from white non-slave states often got their first impression of blacks from traveling white Southerners.
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good post again abagond! funny but right on the button. thats what some guys have been promoting here all the way. 😀
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Yes, blacks are so hardworking, intelligent, and law abiding. Especially in Africa, where they are unencumbered by “The Man”: http://celebratediversity.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/into-the-heart-of-darkness/
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Yes, whites are so hardworking, intelligent, and law abiding: they robbed more land than anyone in history and then forced other people to work it at gunpoint. They are self-glorifying thugs.
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@Chuck
Those are some hard truths. As I’ve mentioned before, I think those issues need to be addressed and resolved. Modern dumb dumb “anti-racist” thought would suggest that discussing those topics is itself “racist.” But I think doing so is key to dimininishing racism as opposed to moronic side-stepping of the problems.
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Randy Garver:
As HQR3 pointed out, it is a sad fact that the racism White Americans used to teach to their children they now teach to the whole the world – through Hollywood, CNN and so on.
Through television, school and other things everyone in America, no matter what their race, gets hit with the same racist messages over and over again. And when you hear something enough times, you begin to believe it. Especially when you are young.
For white people it leads to racism.
For people of colour it leads to internalized racism, which in turn can lead to self-doubt and even self-hatred. Most unlearn it, at least to a degree, but few unlearn it perfectly.
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abagond:
almost every society in the history of this planet has engaged in slavery. black africans did as well, as you know.
the difference here is that Western whites were the first *to stop* the slave trade and eradicate it from its societies. there is never credit given for that.
the fact remains that white people are more intelligent and hard working than black people – for whatever reasons. would you prefer to complain about it and wait for someone to hand you those traits or would you like to lift yourself up by your bootstraps and do it for yourself?
if you, blacks, were so capable then why haven’t black communities sustained themselves within their own little bubbles? why do they always degrade and turn into slums? white people don’t mess with them, yet they turn into impoverished ghettos much quicker than areas where other poor “Others” live.
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Chuck:
Where in the world did you learn to talk and think like that? Is there like a course or something?
By your reasoning if I raped your mother six times and then stopped, I could say “I am not the only one who raped women” and “At least I stopped!” and expect to get off.
Then after excusing slavery with such morally broken thinking you then have the nerve to call white people “hard working” and saying blacks should pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” – after white people got to where they are not by bootstraps but in part by hundreds of years of hard work by black people!!!
And then after such terrible reasoning, I am expected to believe that whites are more intelligent!!!
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Chuck said:
‘if you, blacks, were so capable then why haven’t black communities sustained themselves within their own little bubbles? why do they always degrade and turn into slums? white people don’t mess with them, yet they turn into impoverished ghettos much quicker than areas where other poor “Others” live.”
If you are truly serious about this subject then go to my post on black ghettos:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/black-ghetto/
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It’s not the first time i read the argument that whites are the first to stop the slave trade and they should be glorified for it.
I thought it was some kind of joke but it looks like some guys really are buying it. well .. whatever.
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Now that you’re on this topic, would you mind doing a future post on AMBW (Asian man, black woman) relationships? That would be really interesting.
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Awesome post by the way. 😀
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wow, aiyo and abagond was spot on with this post. I will remember this and give aiyo credit when I quote her in the future.
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chuck
and why should it be??? When I spill water on my parents kitchen floor, I clean it up. I don’t go asking my parents for an award because I cleaned up a mess I MADE!
abagond to chuck Then after excusing slavery with such morally broken thinking you then have the nerve to call white people “hard working” and saying blacks should pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” – after white people got to where they are not by bootstraps but in part by hundreds of years of hard work by black people!!!
or you can enjoy the condensed version
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dag abagond, you don’t allow videos to show here anymore?
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oyan
and this here is the truth madame. well said 🙂
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about the slave trade. i don’t believe all that crap when they say that it was africans who sold their people into slavery. this statement to me is trying to cover tracks. its just a statement show me some proof. there is tons of doctrine about slavery.this sound to me like guilt talking.
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@ chuck
whites and blacks ended slavery. i wouldn’t say just whites.
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@ chuck
you have some nerve to criticize the black community. we have problems yes but i am very proud of some of my brothers and sisters out there especially the ones that break barriers.especially when their acheivements is not coming from hand me down. have you been in every black community? maybe if racist america had given us reparation we could have build back our culture and communities.
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@ medium
Africans did sell people into slavery. But whether they understood that the enslaved were being treated as chattel is a different story…..
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I’ve gotta admit, after I read Chuck’s comment, I laughed. Not a healthy laugh, but more of a macabre point-and-laugh laugh.
It is in my opinion that Chuck should probably get a room with this guy: http://www.bilerico.com/2010/08/500x_shirtguy.jpg
And then they can both have fun with Arab Trader Arguments and random misspellings!
Seriously though Abagond, your blog attracts the crazies! There isn’t a course for this kind of racism — it only grows wild in the fields of ignorance.
However, I choose to believe such people are outliers. If I didn’t, I’d probably want to kill myself. But this way all I feel like doing is this:
facepalm
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@ Abagond
The reason why I posted my first post was because I interpreted (or misinterpreted!) the text as meaning both Black people and Asian people are equally treated as foreigners according to the formal definition, which is ‘a person from a foreign country.’ While they are both not accepted as ‘real’ Americans, it seems to be in different ways.
@ Hathor
Thank you for explaining this for me. So I suppose it was somewhat similar to what I’ve heard of Japan? There are not many Black people there, so they get stared at and come across a lot of racism because the Japanese people are generally ignorant of Black people and do not encounter enough to realise the stereotypes are stereotypes.
@ Oyan
I am not interested in playing the ‘Oppression Olympics’ either.
That is good to know. I only mentioned it because I realised my post may have come across that way and I do not want to give that impression.
And, yes, Black Americans are treated as ‘foreigners in their own country, “Go back to Africa’ has a purpose.
Okay. Thank you for correcting me. I hope you wouldn’t mind answering a few more questions: one of the reasons I am on this blog is because I became aware of how ignorant we are of other ethnicities’ experiences. Sometimes we complain about racism, yet, despite not having the power of White people, we sometimes end up believing in the stereotypes of other ethnicities that have been perpetuated by White people. Sometimes the racism even sets us against each other. I’ve seen how we tend to segregate ourselves by ethnicity and know little about each other even though each group has experienced racism in one way or another. So I would like to learn more about other people’s unique experiences and broaden my horizons.
Here are my questions (if you don’t mind answering): Is this ‘Go back to Africa’ type of foreignness applied to Black people often? For example, do Black people also get asked stupid questions as if they just hopped off the plane? Does it seem to be deeply ingrained in White Americans minds that every Black person must have been born in an African country and not in the US?
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if you, blacks, were so capable then why haven’t black communities sustained themselves within their own little bubbles? why do they always degrade and turn into slums?
Do American whites seriously not realize that there are black MIDDLE CLASS neighbourhoods?
Why are you so lazy Chuck? I am a Trinidadian-Canadian living in Toronto and even I know that African-Americans have middle class enclaves. There is a lot of info about this online. Even Abagond posted about this.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/the-black-middle-class-in-america/
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addendum
I am a Trinidadian-Canadian living in Toronto and even I know that African-Americans have SUSTAINED middle class enclaves.
But there are challenges
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5580884
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@’Ella’
@ Oyan I am not interested in playing the ‘Oppression Olympics’ either.
That is good to know. I only mentioned it because I realised my post may have come across that way and I do not want to give that impression.
And, yes, Black Americans are treated as ‘foreigners in their own country, “Go back to Africa’ has a purpose.
Okay. Thank you for correcting me.
—————————- ———————– ——————-
‘No problem’, and your welcome!
———————– —————– ——————–
Sometimes the racism even sets us against each other. I’ve seen how we tend to segregate ourselves by ethnicity and know little about each other even though each group has experienced racism in one way or another. So I would like to learn more about other people’s unique experiences and broaden my horizons.
—————— ———————- ———————-
‘Yes, divide and conquor’ has its moments’ : (
—————– ——————- ——————
Here are my questions: Is this ‘Go back to Africa’ type of foreignness applied to Black people often?
thanks for asking. It is a meme, that is always underneath the surface, particularly with the more overt racists. My mother and I were on the bus and, a few hispanic folk boarded, communicating in spanish’;my mom quipped to me that she wished ‘they would speak english(!), I was about to answer, when a white male, overhearing this expressed his agreement, and then said, without missing a beat, ‘just like you people learned english’, and then he complimented my mother on her ‘articulate’ command of the language. Should have seen my mom’s face! ha!
————- —————— ——————– —————–
For example, do Black people also get asked stupid questions as if they just hopped off the plane? Does it seem to be deeply ingrained in White Americans minds that every Black person must have been born in an African country and not in the US?
————————————————————-
We do not necessarily get the ‘fob’ treatment, but we do get the, ‘oh wow, you all use microwaves’, forks, watch the news, went to college, travelled, have insurance, etc.
Paul Winfield, (r.i.p.) was in the film ‘Sounder’ (1972), and told the story of how the script/screen writers, were asking about a scene where his children see him coming home; they were trying to figure out what should the children say/cry out to greet their father; Winfield suggested that they simply cry out, daddy, or pop, paw etc. The screen writers were utterly shocked, that black Americans called their paternal units dad, daddy, father, pop, pawpaw, paw,etc.
I have been asked by ‘others’ if I am American, and have almost had to display some proof’ of my ‘native born’ status. I work at a university, with an extremely large asian population, and just recently became familiar with the ‘fob’ term. I understand your frustration at always being perceived as the consumate ‘other’; some of my associates have seen asian/other news reporters, and will quip, “look at how they can come here and get good jobs”, which always gets this response from me, ‘um, they are more than likely, native born Americans. The response is usually, “oh, you know what, your’re probably right’. I understand of what you speak; but trust, black Americans are ‘othered’, just differently. Finally, this black conservative , Larry Elder, who had a show, ‘the Moral Court’, once retorted to a blk woman who was complaining about racism to ‘go back to Africa’!
Peace & Blessings
(Ari Fleischer: What if Helen Thomas said all blacks need to go back to Africa? on Youtube)
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Racism against blacks is even worse.
To this I can only say WTF?
How could you possibly quantify this? If higher poverty and incarceration rates is the metric you use for determining the level of racism that each ethnicity faces, then you must believe that Whites are an all powerful force that control the destinies of every minority in America and only by easing up on their racism do any groups move forward.
By playing up Asians as the opposite of blacks, White Americans can tell themselves they are not racist while keeping their racist views about blacks untouched.
Ah, I see you do believe that. Yes, Whites, nefarious as they are, have implemented a secret plan that allows Asians to achieve a higher median income and lower incarceration rates than even Whites themselves and they do this only so they can continue being racist against Blacks. How can you ever figure out the motivations of those crafty devils? They’re playing mind games with all of us! 😮
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@ mr fox
i’m not saying that african did not sell people into slavery. but i just don’t believe everything i hear. history comes with alot of brainwash. i definately know that slavery did exist. the facts about slavery is within me. for all i know it could have been one king that sold his people and they make it seem like all of africa did this. africa is a continent colonized by many. it could have been they sell them as a trade but it wasn’t for slavery. white supremacy like to alter things to make themself look good. so before i believe this i need facts. not a statement. which is african sold their people into slavery. one of the biggest lie christopher columbus did not discover america. etc. how do i know that they didn’t write this on paper to not make themselves look as bad. knowing a statement like this would be very hard to track. i don’t believe everything i hear sorry.
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Oyan: “My mother and I were on the bus and, a few hispanic folk boarded, communicating in spanish’;my mom quipped to me that she wished ‘they would speak english(!), I was about to answer, when a white male, overhearing this expressed his agreement, and then said, without missing a beat, ‘just like you people learned english’, and then he complimented my mother on her ‘articulate’ command of the language. Should have seen my mom’s face! ha!”
Isn’t that man’s tactless comment an independent issue from your mother’s opinion regarding whether or not immigrants ought to learn English?
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@ fox
just spoke to my friend from senegal. he said that in his history books it is stated that some kings did that. but as i said i have to think because africa is a continent and what was the time frame. he also believe that it is exaggerated. it could have been one king that did this for all i know. but it is written african sold their people into slavery. which is a very wide statement. i ask him who wrote those books , he answered i don’t know.
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Sagat:
I think the unemployment rate of those with university degrees is a reasonable rough measure of how much racism different races face since it roughly controls for education and class.
In March 2009:
3.8% white
5.0% Hispanic
5.0% Asian
7.2% black
If there were no racism, then you expect all four to have an unemployment rate somewhere near 4%. Instead the Hispanic and Asian unemployment rate is 32% higher and the black rate is 89% higher.
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@ randy garver
i think people should speak whatever language they wish to speak. for those who don’t like it. should mind their business because they are not talking to you. things like this shouldn’t be an issue. the world is full of different languages and its not only english.
and that white male on the bus insult your mother and then gave her a compliment.
he did the same thing she was doing to the people speaking spanish.( its called ridicule ). she felt she had something over these hispanic people and the white male felt he had something over her. so i guess its not a nice thing to do
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Sagat said:
“Ah, I see you do believe that. Yes, Whites, nefarious as they are, have implemented a secret plan that allows Asians to achieve a higher median income and lower incarceration rates than even Whites themselves and they do this only so they can continue being racist against Blacks. How can you ever figure out the motivations of those crafty devils? They’re playing mind games with all of us! “
Learn to read. I said nothing like that.
Maybe you do not know what confirmation bias is. Well, there’s a post for that too:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/confirmation-bias/
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And, yes, Black Americans are treated as ‘foreigners in their own country, “Go back to Africa’ has a purpose.
Yes, I recently got into a debate about immigration recently. It was suggested that non-white people should be evicted from the country because they are foreigners, even if they are citizens. When I pointed out that my ancestors where probably here before his was, he brought up black crime rates (particularly black male rape of white women) in order to justify why black people are not fit for citizenship.
He asked me what the motive could be for such crime. To which I replied, “It must be our criminal nature. Next time I rape a white woman, I’ll report back about my motive.”
😉
I mean… really?
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Welcome back, Alte!
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Oh, yes. Hello Abagond! Things are certainly hopping around here.
I had a bit of net-burnout. But I am back with a vengeance, and fully prepared to bore everyone to tears with more dull and dense academia. (e.g.)
Speaking of dense academia, would you be so kind as to comment on my latest article?
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Abagond,
If there were no racism, then you expect all four to have an unemployment rate somewhere near 4%.
A college degree is not a guarantee of employment. Had you considered that many have chosen fields of study where there aren’t many job openings? Think of the glut of people who go for liberal arts degrees. There are multiple factors that can affect if someone is hired or not. How aggressively are they seeking employment? Do they understand how to network? Are their skills in demand? Do they have a proven work history?
Blaming a complex issue just on White racism is an incredibly simplistic approach. And it’s not only Whites that do the hiring.
Learn to read. I said nothing like that.
I was being absurd to make a point. Your assertion that Whites have consciously decided to elevate Asians in their minds as a method to allow themselves to be racist towards Blacks is equally absurd.
You confuse statistical means with stereotypes. It’s not a stereotype that Asians have a high median income and low crime rates. That’s a statistical fact. A stereotype about Asians would be that all Chinese know Kung Fu. A stereotype about Blacks would be that all Blacks like fried chicken.
People being aware of statistical averages is not racism.
Of course the average does not apply to individuals. That’s why it’s called an average.
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Abagond:
I see you skip over addressing the link to black crime statistics as well as my curious anecdotes about black criminality. Why?
Instead, you go here.
This is a stupid analogy. First, you are groupifying white people as if *all* white people are the rapist. You make every white person a member of that group which is hypocritical for you to do since you don’t think similar arguments should be made about blacks. As such, it is much harder to pin slavery on “white people” than it is to pin your raping of my mother on you specifically. Because without a whole other group of white people who were opposed to slavery it wouldn’t have been abolished. Can you disagree with this?
I didn’t excuse slavery. I’m just pointing out that white people took full advantage of slavery at one point in “white history”, but they reformed their ways. Something that Africans themselves haven’t even done. It seems that Western whites suffer mostly because they were the ones who actually took a stand against this institution.
And look around you. White people, today, work harder than black people. A black person today cannot blame slavery for their inability to succeed. If that were the case then why are there successful black people in this country? How did they do it?
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medium
@ randy garver
i think people should speak whatever language they wish to speak. for those who don’t like it. should mind their business because they are not talking to you. things like this shouldn’t be an issue. the world is full of different languages and its not only english.
and that white male on the bus insult your mother and then gave her a compliment.
he did the same thing she was doing to the people speaking spanish.( its called ridicule ). she felt she had something over these hispanic people and the white male felt he had something over her. so i guess its not a nice thing to do
——————————————————
@ Medium & Randy Gardner,
Exactly ‘Medium’; and as far as people minding their own business, I totally agree, but, ‘we’ are in Southern California, and on this bus ride, mom/I and the yt male, were the apparently only english speakers on the bus, literally, so my ma was commenting on that as much as language. The yt male in turn, was essentially putting, ‘us’, in our place.
My point here, is that, while my mom and I are native born, indigenuous black American, going back several generations, this yt male was kind enough to remind us of our not very ‘recently’ arrived status, and how ‘we had to learn english’. I mean, seriously, he brings up how ‘our’ black ancestors learned english as a point of his historical status, their status, and ours. All ‘we’ know is America; what language transition of my ancestors was he speaking of? He could have had Russian, French, ancestors, or Swedish, or some other non-english speaking anglos, but, he brought up our slave history, in a round about way, thus addressing our ‘citizenship.
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chic noir:
But do your parents hassle you and never let you forget the time you spilled water on their floor? Do they bring it up every time you get together for lunch, dinner, or holidays? I doubt it.
I’m not asking that black racialists pat white people on the back for abolishing slavery, I’m just saying that they shouldn’t use the stain of slavery to complain about their crappy life outcomes.
The way black people treat the issue today would be similar to if your parents kept bringing up your spill; surely, at some point, you’d inform the crowd that you cleaned up your mess.
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medium:
Of course you would say that. You have a vested interest in believing that inaccuracy.
Every black that was freed in this country was freed by virtue of some white slave master. Any black abolitionist who fought for the cause was able to do so because someone somewhere freed him or his ancestors. Since black people were brought here to be slaves and not as free men, it must be true that white people were the champions of abolition.
And why can’t I criticize the black community? You all feel perfectly fine criticizing the white one.
And you state that you are proud of your black bretheren who achieve without hand-me-downs but then you say that America should give you reparations? Talk about cognitive dissonance.
If reparations were given to black people, most individual blacks would blow that money on things that would not improve their plight. I don’t aim this charge solely at black people. If any group of people is given a chunk of “found money” they don’t do anything responsibly with it.
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abagond:
What a naive thought. You assume that each group’s GPA and participation in extracurriculars and other skill building endeavors is the same. But surely you know that it is not.
Most likely, blacks come out of college with lower GPA and a less stellar resume. They probably tend to enter less stringent majors (stop me if I’m wrong) which would translate into lower unemployment.
Affirmative action doesn’t help because it floods classrooms with black students who, perhaps, shouldn’t be in college. Please read Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams on this point. So the black unemployment rate for college grads is further inflated because of that.
Not saying that there isn’t some discrimination, but you aren’t comparing apples to apples here. There are so many other variables at play besides your umbrella catch-all “racism”.
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zek:
weakest facepalm i’ve experienced to date. you didn’t say anything. you didn’t make any point; all you did was ad hom me. that is not deserving of a facepalm, sorry.
again, such a tactic is practiced by those who have nothing interesting or meaningful to say. i understand that jasmin probably facepalmed you over the weekend and you’re trying to slough it off on someone else.
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Every black that was freed in this country was freed by virtue of some white slave master. Any black abolitionist who fought for the cause was able to do so because someone somewhere freed him or his ancestors. Since black people were brought here to be slaves and not as free men, it must be true that white people were the champions of abolition.
This is not true. There were no slave laws in effect when the first Blacks came here and they were no different than White indentured servants. Slavery for Blacks become more prevalent when the ruling elite deemed it necessary to maintain their desired social order.
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Truth B Told:
If I see two comments in a row that look almost alike, I will delete the older one assuming that the newer one is a correction.
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Chuck said:
“I see you skip over addressing the link to black crime statistics as well as my curious anecdotes about black criminality. Why?”
Because the subject of black crime is a common derailment. That is why I avoided it in the post even though stereotypes about crime do fit the Three Bears pattern too.
I have separate posts on black crime stats:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/black-crime-statistics/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/black-rape-statistics/
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Let’s be careful not to conflate race and sex, as they are two very different things. The STEM subjects are clearly dominated by men, and for good reason.
If that were the case then why are there successful black people in this country? How did they do it?
Same way white people do it. Marriage. The greatest wealth-creation machine ever. Black people have abandoned it to their own detriment.
If any group of people is given a chunk of “found money” they don’t do anything responsibly with it.
This is true. Reparations for such an old crime is stupid, anyway. They did that with Germans and the Jews, but at least some of them were actually still alive at the time.
The history is very interesting, but black people need to focus on moving forward and improving their lives in the here and now. Even if things suck, they won’t get better by complaining about how much they suck. There are real, concrete, simple things that individual black people can do to move themselves forward, and we should be concentrating on those things.
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To Abagond and Sagat,
I think the unemployment rate of those with university degrees is a reasonable rough measure of how much racism different races face since it roughly controls for education and class.
In March 2009:
3.8% white
5.0% Hispanic
5.0% Asian
7.2% black
If there were no racism, then you expect all four to have an unemployment rate somewhere near 4%. Instead the Hispanic and Asian unemployment rate is 32% higher and the black rate is 89% higher.
A snapshot in time for unemployment rates by and education does not necessarily prove or disprove racism. Overall the Asian unemployment rate is lower than the White unemployment rate. Am I to conclude that is less relevant than your filter of the college educated only..?
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
Unemployment for Asians in September 2010 6.4%, for Whites 8.3%. (As you can see these figures vary a bit by month… I choose the above figures consciously to “make my case” but am revealing this to point out how statistics can be manipulated…)
Thomas Sowell has pointed out that in multiple points in US history Blacks had lower unemployment rates than Whites. This had nothing to do with racism against Whites but with the perceived docility (talk about a stereotype that has gone away…) of Black workers (they were more reluctant to form unions..) and lower average pay.
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Chuck said:
“What a naive thought. You assume that each group’s GPA and participation in extracurriculars and other skill building endeavors is the same. But surely you know that it is not. ”
If you think “participation in extracurriculars” could possibly matter more than your race you are living in an utter fantasy world.
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Sagat says:
“Think of the glut of people who go for liberal arts degrees. “
Oh, and that is part of why Asians and blacks have a higher unemployment rate – because they go into liberal arts more than whites? And that honestly seems likely to you? And this is one of the Complexities that my INCREDIBLY SIMPLISTIC thinking missed?
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To Chuck:
So did the laws doing away with slavery just appear out of thin air or did white people, who ran government, enact them?
In Canada and the UK slavery was abolished by law. In the US slavery was abolished by force then abolished by law. Most assuredly Blacks fought in the civil to secure their freedom but the majority of people who died on the Union side were White. (I do think that Black soldiers from the Union were markedly over represented as a percentage of their population in the Union…)
Haiti, Blacks most assuredly freed themselves.
Mexico, effectively Black slaves were liberated by Mestizos. (Through the successful war of Independence from Spain in 1829 and the subsequent Mexican government decree that outlawed slavery, Blacks did fight on the winning side..)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
Brazil abolished slavery in steps:
Most definitely their were some Blacks did participate in their freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil#Steps_towards_freedom
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ok abagond. cherry pick if you must. but how about GPA and majoring in highly employable majors?
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Chuck & Sagat:
I am not cherry picking. I am pointing out that neither of you are serious. You claim you only care about the truth but then you say such utterly laughable things.
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This slavery stuff is getting way too off topic. Any further comments on this thread about it will be deleted.
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fine, address my points about black criminalilty. how do whites deal with those facts? should we ignore them and ignore our tendency to stereotype other people and just hope for the best? at what point does the stereotyped group have a duty to change the facts that create those stereotypes?
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You claim you only care about the truth but then you say such utterly laughable things.
The point about the liberal arts degree was an example. The broader point which I made in the sentence before was that they may have degrees in fields where openings are low. Or they may have been in fields that were hit disproportionately by job losses. Tell me what’s laughable about that? Seems much more sensible than your idea that White racism is the cause of every single racial disparity in the world.
Your whole premise that White people have devised this hierarchal system of stereotypes where Asians are lauded and Blacks are condemned just so Whites can be secret racists is so outlandishly laughable that I can’t believe anyone would buy it.
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To Abagond and Sagat,
I tried finding the latest data for unemployment by race and college education directly form the bureau of labor statistics but couldn’t find the data. I did find this site which states that unemployment among college dropouts for Asians, Latinos, and Whites is almost identical:
Asians are slightly lower than Whites and Latinos are slightly higher.
Also take into account:
Unemployment Rate by Age
The unemployment age time series begins in 1948. Recent history has shown greater employment stability as age increases.
Age Range October 2010 Month/Month
(Points) Year/Year
(Points)
25-34 9.9% -0.1 -0.8
35-44 7.9% -0.5 -1.1
45-54 7.8% +0.1 0.0
55+ 7.3% +0.1 +0.3
So unemployment is markedly lower for older people (which are more White…) than younger people. (The figures for the 18 – 25 year old cohort are in the teens…)
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/demographics/
And once again the overall data shows that Asians have a lower unemployment level than Whites.
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To Sagat,
I don’t know how things are in the rest of the country but you have quite a few Asian college graduates in California that are just hitting the job market. Some have recently gotten visas so you have a pretty ample supply of Asian immigrants with newly minted degrees but not much experience. The situation for recent college grads (of any race..) is the worst I have seen in my life. (worse than the 1981-82 recession…)
Look at the following graph:
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/demographics/
Under Unemployment Rate: White, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian.
In the 1992 recession the unemployment rate for Asians was half that for Whites. The unemployment rates for Asians and Whites have criss crossed multiple times in the past two decades.
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Chuck But do your parents hassle you and never let you forget the time you spilled water on their floor? Do they bring it up every time you get together for lunch, dinner, or holidays? I doubt it.
Chuck, how often have you had a blk person approach you about slavery in your day to day life??? I bet you can count the instances on one hand. How many times have you had a blk person stop you on the street and demand that you apologize for slavery???
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chic:
the desire for reparations or a desire to keep whites feeling perpetual guilt about slavery is the underpinning of the post MLK civil rights movement. nobody has to come up to me and say anything about slavery because i don’t give them a reason, but rest assured that whenever all too many blacks don’t get their way they bring that bogeyman out of the closet.
but to the real point of your metaphor, black people only want to mention how white people have wronged them all throughout history. there is never any discussion about how liberty-loving whites have helped black people. just as abagond tends to do, black racialists like to keep their foot on the white guilt accelerator.
because for the parts where whites have sought to keep black people down, there was an offsetting group of whites who sought to prop them up. as shelby steele and others have written so eloquently, newfound freedom can be scary. all too many blacks, the ones abagond lends credence to, would rather rest on the crutch of victimology because it is much easier to do than lifting oneself up.
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Uncle Milton,
Thanks for finding that info about unemployment rates and helping to flesh out the conversation with some tangible facts.
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Chuck,
Replies below:
C: fine, address my points about black criminalilty. how do whites deal with those facts? should we ignore them and ignore our tendency to stereotype other people and just hope for the best? at what point does the stereotyped group have a duty to change the facts that create those stereotypes?
O: I think Chuck poses a highly legitimate question here, and it would do well for those of us who tend to side with Abagond to answer him and not ignore it. I’ll try to do so here.
Chuck, you may recall my run-in with the police earlier this year while getting some Chinese takeout. Now, I’m a law abiding citizen and have been for many, many years. Yet, I was hassled by the cops simply for being Black and in the hood.
What do you suggest I do to “change the facts that create stereotypes”? Mind you, I’m not arguing that the cops didn’t have legitimate cause to be where they were that day – they got a call that another patron was making a nuisance of himself and they responded; I just got caught up in the net. So, what do you suggest I do?
Another example – the Black guy who gets passed by while waiting for a cab – mind you, he’s noticeably middle aged and wearing appropriate clothing for said age. Moreover, he’s standing on the corner in say, downtown Philly or Manhattan or DC, not the hood. Let’s say he’s wearing business casual clothing, and its daytime. What more should he do to “change the facts that create those stereotypes”?
In the two instances I’ve mentioned, one from my own life no less, the point I’m making is clear: these are instances of law abiding citizens who’ve done their level best to lead decent lives. What can they do to influence public policy? How can they singelhandedly change the perception of criminality among Black Men?
Your response?
O.
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@ Oyan
thanks for asking. It is a meme, that is always underneath the surface, particularly with the more overt racists. My mother and I were on the bus and, a few hispanic folk boarded, communicating in spanish’;my mom quipped to me that she wished ‘they would speak english(!), I was about to answer, when a white male, overhearing this expressed his agreement, and then said, without missing a beat, ‘just like you people learned english’, and then he complimented my mother on her ‘articulate’ command of the language. Should have seen my mom’s face! ha!
You’re welcome. 🙂 Well, hopefully your mum learnt that what she said was wrong, but unfortunately there isn’t another person to make that White man see his own mistakes!
I’ve never had anyone compliment my English before, but I have had people act as if they don’t understand me when I am speaking the same language. I’ve also had that in French too. I know that what I’ve said is perfectly correct and understandable, but they pretend they don’t know what I’m talking about as an excuse to avoid having to help me. One time, I had the shop assistant simply laugh in my face when I asked for help after having lost something.
The screen writers were utterly shocked, that black Americans called their paternal units dad, daddy, father, pop, pawpaw, paw,etc.
How odd. What did they expect them to call their dad then?
I have been asked by ‘others’ if I am American, and have almost had to display some proof’ of my ‘native born’ status. I work at a university, with an extremely large asian population, and just recently became familiar with the ‘fob’ term. I understand your frustration at always being perceived as the consumate ‘other’; some of my associates have seen asian/other news reporters, and will quip, “look at how they can come here and get good jobs”, which always gets this response from me, ‘um, they are more than likely, native born Americans. The response is usually, “oh, you know what, your’re probably right’. I understand of what you speak; but trust, black Americans are ‘othered’, just differently. Finally, this black conservative , Larry Elder, who had a show, ‘the Moral Court’, once retorted to a blk woman who was complaining about racism to ‘go back to Africa’!
Thank you for taking the time to explain everything to me. I understand now. Thank you for the link to the video too: it makes me smile to see people standing up for themselves and turning the tables.
I am also familiar with having to ‘prove’ where I come from. There are still people who find it impossible to believe a non-White-looking person can be born in a country like Britain. It’s as if they believe all non-White people lose their ability to reproduce in certain countries.
I hate ‘go back to where you came from’. I’ve heard it too many times aimed at myself, my family, my friends…
I am often the ‘other’ wherever I go, so I’ve come to get used to it until people get rude. For example, recently I had complete strangers staring at me and discussing what ethnicity I could be out loud before coming over and asking where I was from. Sometimes it makes me feel as if I’m someone’s rare breed of dog and not a human. You can gawp at a dog and talk about its appearance all you like, but why is it okay to do that to a person if they look ‘different’? It’s degrading and dehumanising.
I was with friends who are all from different parts of the world (but all White, so I think they wouldn’t ‘get’ my frustration), so they thought the question was for everyone (although the rude people specifically came up to me) and I got away with only telling them what country I was born in. I’m sure it wasn’t satisfying for them to not be able to put me into a box.
Peace & Blessings
And the same to you, Oyan. 🙂
About Asian unemployment in the USA… if it is anything like Canada, a big portion of Asians may be employed by other Asians and not by Whites. When the recession hit, many were prepared to cut people’s hours to keep all of their employees (as opposed to firing someone). However, once they are out of a job, Asians remain unemployed longer than any other ethnicity:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130408243
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Chuck said:
“fine, address my points about black criminalilty. how do whites deal with those facts? should we ignore them and ignore our tendency to stereotype other people and just hope for the best? at what point does the stereotyped group have a duty to change the facts that create those stereotypes?”
I will do a post on this today.
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I have to agree with Uncle Milton and Sagat on this one; Asians, taken as a group, are not only more employed than just about every other racial group in the country, but they also tend to get college degrees in the “hard sciences” much moreso than do Whites or Blacks. It is not at all unreasonable to assume that the latter plays a role in the former.
That said, I also think we have enough evidence to show and prove that racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly Men, is alive and well out on the job market. Its not as blatant as it used to be, but its still there nevertheless, and is something that has both been studied and documented by some of the country’s best known institutions, such as the University of Chicago and its famed “Black Name” resume study. There are many, many more examples.
So for me, it all comes down to, as per usual, the answer falling somewhere in between the two competing arguments proferred. Both can be and often are, true.
That doesn’t do much for the hardcore partisans on either side, but, bang, there it is.
Holla back
O.
P.S.: Sagat, too bad you didn’t want to carry on our conversation over at your site. I was looking forward to your explanation of how you are so very different from the rest of the HBD community, to say nothing of looking forward to you grappling with the very real public policy questions regarding HBD that you never got around to.
P.P.S.: Abagond, you’ve done a great deal of posts about Women in general, and Black Women in particular – how they’re perceived/treated, and so forth. I was wondering – when are you going to do some posts about Men? Given the recent conversation, I was hoping you’d do up a post about how shorter statured Men are perceived/treated in our society. How about it?
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That said, I also think we have enough evidence to show and prove that racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly Men, is alive and well out on the job market.
Yes, I think black American men suffer from LIFO (last in, first out). Even when similarly qualified, they will mostly be hired to fulfill a quota, or when the company has run out of other-race applicants. So they seem to catch up during a boom, but when the firing starts, they are the first to get dumped, often because they have not been given the same “type” of position (seniority, tenure, union-protected placement, permanent contract, etc.).
They also suffer from having to compete with black women.
The black community needs to do what they used to do, but which Detroit and the welfare state destroyed. They need to focus on creating their own economy where they are not begging for scraps from non-black employers (who will always tend to prefer their own).
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The black community needs to do what they used to do, but which Detroit and the welfare state destroyed. They need to focus on creating their own economy where they are not begging for scraps from non-black employers (who will always tend to prefer their own).
It seems that blacks used do certain things because they didn’t have a choice, but now that they feel that some whites like them, many blacks obviously prefer whites and will lean towards anything approaching white when given the chance. Yet blacks get upset when whites prefer their own.
Black Americans need to have an HONEST discussion about this complexion hierarchy that many of them uphold because many blacks don’t prefer other blacks or only prefer certain other blacks who look more white. I HARP about this because I have seen how the complexion hierarchy acts like a cancer against black progress.
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Jorbia,
It seems pretty straightforward to me; people tend to prefer lighter skin tones, for whatever reason, and I don’t see this abating anytime soon. Those like you who take umbrage at this, for whatever reason, have really only one viable option:
Create and/or support alternative outlets of all kinds that caters to Black people of darker skintones.
It’s really as simple as that. Anythning else, especially whining and moaning on a blog, is just pissing in the wind.
O.
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@Obsidian —
It seems pretty straightforward to me; people tend to prefer lighter skin tones, for whatever reason, and I don’t see this abating anytime soon. Those like you who take umbrage at this, for whatever reason,
I don’t automatically accept that all or even most “people tend to prefer lighter skin tones despite the very skimpy and probably invalid research saying that’s the case. So I do champion darker skinned people at every opportunity, though you may call what I do “whining and moaning.”
BTW, isn’t that a rather defeatist attitude, coming from a black man?
So I take “umbrage” at the complexion hierarchy for the same reason you were supposedly “whining and moaning” on your site about whites discriminating against black men who were qualified for jobs or for advancement on jobs. It’s discrimination on the basis of complexion since the existence of “race” has never been scientifically proven.
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Obsidian says,
Jorbia,
It seems pretty straightforward to me; people tend to prefer lighter skin tones, for whatever reason, and I don’t see this abating anytime soon. Those like you who take umbrage at this, for whatever reason, have really only one viable option:
Create and/or support alternative outlets of all kinds that caters to Black people of darker skintones.
It’s really as simple as that. Anythning else, especially whining and moaning on a blog, is just pissing in the wind.
laromana says,
jorbia, as the INTELLIGENT BW that you are, please CONTINUE IGNORING ANNOYING, ARROGANT, INTRANSIGENT, IGNORAMUS, ANTI-BW DERAILERS who think their IRRELEVANT (ABSURD NONSENSE) “OPINIONS” MATTER and KEEP SHARING your EXCELLENT, IMPORTANT RELEVANT INSIGHTS that ACTUALLY HELP LEAD to EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS to the many problems created by ANTI-BW RACISM.
It’s as “SIMPLE” as THAT.
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@Laromana —
jorbia, as the INTELLIGENT BW that you are, please CONTINUE IGNORING ANNOYING, ARROGANT, INTRANSIGENT, IGNORAMUS, ANTI-BW DERAILERS . . . .
It does seem that this guy has a problem with black women or women expressing their views whereas he seems to feel that he can say whatever he wants to say anyway he wants to say it. Well, who is HE? 🙂
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EXACTLY, jorbia. He’s quite PRESUMPTUOUS.
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obs Jorbia,
It seems pretty straightforward to me; people tend to prefer lighter skin tones, for whatever reason, and I don’t see this abating anytime soon. Those like you who take umbrage at this, for whatever reason, have really only one viable option:
If you really feel this way then you shouldn’t complain when be discriminated when applying for a job because the employer or interviewer prefers light-skinned people.
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chuck nobody has to come up to me and say anything about slavery because i don’t give them a reason,
Really, I would think it would be by virtue of your whitness that you do.
but rest assured that whenever all too many blacks don’t get their way they bring that bogeyman out of the closet
Look chuck, there is no denying that the aftereffects of slavery have played a large role in African-American culture and they way they are seen by American Whites until today. Do I think all Whites are racist, of course not but do I think that most Whts and Blks in this country have some subconscious negative thoughts about blk people… yes. Now where do these thoughts come from??? How do those negative thoughts manifest in the communication and interactions of the races as well as how blk see themselves?
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It seems pretty straightforward to me; people tend to prefer lighter skin tones, for whatever reason, and I don’t see this abating anytime soon.
I won’t suggest that this is some sort of universal norm. Preferences vary.
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It keeps logging me in under my old account, which is confusing. I hate that you use wordpress, as I do.
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I love it! “Three Bears Effect”…it fits prefectly! Time and again, I’ve been told “Wow, you’re so dark but so attractive!” Or, “You’re very pretty – for a black girl!”
So, yes, I’ve seen and experienced this effect from day one. Nice to have a name for it! : )
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Abagond, I applaud you for bringing up the fact that Africans are in fact more successful when it come to education than any other group in the United States, even Asian. Yes some were already educated when they got here, but it is also common for second generational Africans to be successful when it comes to education. Many of the blacks who are accepted into Ivy league schools, are in fact second generation Africans. That is something that is rarely brought up in the media.
@Chuck
If you want to find information on Africans, which I am sure you will ask about, look it up on wikipedia. It discusses how Africans, especially Nigerians, are the most educated ethnic group in this country. I don’t know about the West Indians, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are highly successful also. American blacks know alot about how hardworking and driven West Indians tend to be. So what might apply to one black ethnic group doesn’t apply to others. It is the same with Asian ethnic groups. They are different as well.
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Sagat said:
“Your whole premise that White people have devised this hierarchal system of stereotypes where Asians are lauded and Blacks are condemned just so Whites can be secret racists is so outlandishly laughable that I can’t believe anyone would buy it.”
I do not know where the model minority stereotype came from. Sometimes stereotypes are created on purpose (Mammy, welfare queen), sometimes they seem to appear first in fiction and then catch on (golliwog, black brute, piccaninny, Dragon Lady). In this case it may have been some editorial in the Wall Street Journal in the 1970s. Who knows. Nor does it matter that much for this post. However it got started it caught on. And it caught on because it served the needs of white people.
White Americans and American society ARE racist but white people do not want to believe that. The model minority stereotype gives them an out and so they believe it.
What white people believe is only loosely based on the truth. So stuff like 9/11 comes as a shock. But neither is what they believe completely a matter of chance either. They believe whatever allows them to live a comfortable life. It is like they wear rose-coloured glasses or something.
More here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/apple-pie-america/
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/the-white-lens/
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Abagond,
Correlation does not imply causation. There are a number of demonstrable metrics wherein the values for whites fall in between those of blacks and asians (education level, median per-capita income, crime). It’s reasonable to believe that many people might observe this pattern and extrapolate it to other areas. There is no evidence to suggest that such extrapolation is purposeful or coordinated.
This belief seemingly suffers from the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy”, whereby one observes a collection of data points and arbitrarily assigns a pattern to them, rather than an underlying pattern organically revealing itself by producing corroborating data.
If white people as a group “needed” or “wanted” a reason to dismiss the effects of racism to account for social problems faced by black folks (a speculative proposition), they could simply refer to the higher levels of educational and economic success attained by African immigrants vs. african-americans as an apples-to-apples comparison.
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Randy said:
“If white people as a group “needed” or “wanted” a reason to dismiss the effects of racism to account for social problems faced by black folks (a speculative proposition), they could simply refer to the higher levels of educational and economic success attained by African immigrants vs. african-americans as an apples-to-apples comparison.”
They could but they do not because, just as you did earlier in your comment, they see all blacks as being the same and all Asians as being the same.
“There is no evidence to suggest that such extrapolation is purposeful or coordinated.”
I never said it was. In fact, I spent my last comment making that very point, that there is no need to suppose that it was purposeful or coordinated.
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Jeri
Abagond, I applaud you for bringing up the fact that Africans are in fact more successful when it come to education than any other group in the United States, even Asian
Africans also beat out other groups in England. Astudy from a few years ago, noted Black African Imigrants and the children of have more post A level education than any other group in England.
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Someone noted above that white society cannot claim that the sacrifices made by white Americans in ending slavery during the Civil War as some equalizing event– the comparison was one of spilling water on another’s floor: cleaning up a mess one made is one’s obligation, not an act of heroism.
Absolutely true. Now, we can honor the sacrifices of the individual whites who suffered in that war. But the nation cannot claim that fighting the Civil war means its sins were absolved. All the NATION did in the war and with the passage of the Civil War amendments was what justice demanded be the least it would do. Further, by the time the war ended, seven or eight generations had been born and had lived and died in slavery after the original natives of Africa had been kidnapped. No war and enfranchisement can be said to balance that– not even a little. Yet we have never paid the reparation which history and conscience continue to demand.
Regarding the “three bears” effect– clever. It’s probably basically true. Not a perfect analogy but for sure, white men generally don’t consider non white women to have any humanity that is inherently their own. To some extent, this may be more a male tendency than anything– i.e. many men think of women in general as existing primarily to satisfy men’s sexual desires– but history and power make this very different when whites are the ones in question.
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This is a fascinating blog. Why can’t whites ever have an honest treatment of racism as is found here?
And what about us “white ethnics”? Where do we fit in?
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So playing on these stereotypes is the reason Japanese porn industry only using male actors whit extremely small penises, like opposite with blacks in U.S. made porn?
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@ML
TenchiJK
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@Aiyo
Wow! And I thought I was in to porn.
How does Mr. Marcus fits in these picture? Is he the exception from the 3 bear’s rule?
According to my girlfriend of Tanzanian origin, white guys have microscopic penises compared to Africans (I’m white). Is it possible she just say so, to stop me nagging about the subject all the time?
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@ML
Yes.
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[…] describes the Three Bears Effect: The Three Bears Effect is the name given by Aiyo at the blog Black British Girl for how whites […]
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[…] blogger (Julian Abagond) took the relay and continued the […]
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Maybe once Asian notices the differences they are able to adjust themselves to ever be more humble and graceful unless they’ve been stricked so harshly they need time to amend and come back to themselves again.
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No offense but I never have believed in the ‘Braniac’ explanation for the relatively high percentage of members of certain ethnicities or ‘races’ to succeed academically in comparison to other ethnicities.
A hardcore emphasis on study / academic achievement is often the explanation for such a phenomenon. East Asians and Jews are two groups that have cultural backgrounds which place great value on studiousness and academic success.
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The whole three bears effect is based on convenient white held stereotypes. It ignores the many poor, impoverished, violent Asian American communities here in America that rarely get mainstream media coverage. It ignores the quiet relatively safe middle class black areas throughout the country. It ignores the difference between different class groups.
It ignores the difference between different Asian American nationalities. Hmong, Cambodians, Vietnamese and other southeast Asian nationalities tend to be poorer. Many of these groups have much higher poverty rates than both blacks and Latinos. But even many Chinese and Japanese Americans live in poverty. Asian Americans are the poorest group in NYC. The three bears effect also ignores African immigrants who are the most educated group in America.
More blacks may live in poverty compared to Asians as a whole, but this is often due to extremely strict immigration policy. There is a reason why America is only 5% Asian despite Asians accounting for the largest race on earth.
But most of all, the three bears effect ignores the differences between black and Asian individuals. And sadly, many minorities internalize the stereotypes. A black kid from the suburbs who doesn’t dress like Chief Keef and try to act out his lyrics but instead is a quiet kid who watches Anime is considered not “acting black”. An young Asian American male who is tall, handsome and athletic still caries the “good at math” and he must have a “little d!ck” stereotypes and it would not be a surprise if he had a hard time dating just because he’s Asian.
Both blacks and Asians often disregard their true personalities to embrace these racial stereotypes to feel more accepted and believe acting like this will result in success. This is why I have known suburban black boys from nice families who are doing years behind bars because they tried to live out Jay-Z lyrics because the mainstream pop culture has marketed inner city thug life as the authentic black experience.
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Thank you so much for writing this article. I agree with everything you said and appreciate the originality and the work you put into it!
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