A guest post by Kiwi:
Note: This post builds on Abagond’s posts on “rootedness” and “counter-frames” and is also based on anthropologist John Ogbu’s work. To fully understand what is said below, read “rootedness” and “counter-frames” first.
In America, racial minorities fall into two groups: “voluntary” and “involuntary”, or what Abagond calls “transplants” and “uprooted”.
Involuntary minorities include Blacks, Natives, some Mexicans (ie: Chicanos), Puerto Ricans, and Native Hawaiians. All were forcibly incorporated into America through conquest, colonialism, or slavery.
Voluntary minorities came to America by choice and trace their immigrant origins to countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Refugees are neither voluntary nor involuntary because while they were forced off their homelands by war, they still chose to come to America.
Whereas voluntary minorities usually join the middle class in one generation through hard work and education, involuntary minorities make up a large share of the permanent underclass and suffer disproportionately from the following social problems:
crime, violence, imprisonment, drugs, gangs, poverty, unemployment, truancy, dropouts, single motherhood, illegitimacy, homelessness, ghettos, low IQ
Why do voluntary and involuntary minorities have such different life outcomes despite members of the same race belonging to both groups?
Here is the causal mechanism:
Frame of reference: Voluntary minorities compare their status in America to their former status in their home countries. Almost always, life was worse back home so their outlook on America is positive. They see America as a land of freedom and opportunity. Involuntary minorities have no other homeland so they compare their status to Whites, which makes their outlook on America negative. They see America as robbing them of freedom and opportunity.
Identity threat: Because voluntary minorities have a positive outlook on America, their identities do not feel threatened by their subordinate status. They trust the system and society’s rules. Involuntary minorities have a negative outlook, so their identities feel threatened by their subordinate status. They distrust the system and society’s rules.
Obedience to authority: Because voluntary minorities do not feel threatened by their subordination, they see society’s norms and values as legitimate and follow the rules. Involuntary minorities feel threatened by their subordination and thus reject society’s norms and values, so they disobey the rules. This often results in maladaptive behaviors that lead to the social problems listed above. This mindset is known as oppositional culture.
Descendants of voluntary minorities become involuntary minorities if they assimilate into an involuntary group of the same race. For example, descendants of Mexican immigrants become Chicanos while descendants of African immigrants become Black Americans. Some involuntary minorities choose to become voluntary by reinterpreting their place in society but this is rare.
While involuntary minorities tend to have strongly antiracist counter-frames due to their distrust of society, voluntary minorities have weak counter-frames due to their trust of society. However, voluntary minorities develop strong counter-frames by their third or fourth generation, even if they have no involuntary group of the same race to assimilate into. An example is Asian Americans.
This phenomenon is largely unconscious but explains the sense of hopelessness in non-immigrant minority communities in contrast to the sense of hope in immigrant minority communities, even when the latter starts off poorer.
Thanks to The Pragmatist, King, and Sharina for inspiring this post.
Images: FeistyThoughts, Slayerment.
See also:
The supposed “causal mechanisms” are overly simplistic and one dimensional. Moreover, all ignore historical (and ongoing) causes for social outcomes.
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@ Kiwi
Interesting post. I will have to reread it more carefully later and think it over, but one question immediately comes to mind:
Why should any racial or ethnic group be subordinated? Is this not the over-arching problem rather than how specific groups deal with aforesaid subordination?
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The explicit argument of this post is if only those _____________ people would behave themselves, work harder, respect authority and be more positive the system would work for them like it does for the “voluntary” minorities.
Warmed over White Supremacy; lacking in nuance and context.
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@ Kiwi
Ok, but (as an example) the African American middle class has typically responded like a voluntary minority group, have they not? Achieving and accomplishing success despite institutionalized racism?
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“Any success they achieve is in SPITE of racism, not because of it. “
The racism voluntary immigrant groups experience in this country is less severe and frequent than racism directed at non-immigrant groups. There is already an outgroup (Black) people in this country to absorb the worst of non-White racism. Moreover, voluntary immigrant groups have the privilege of “middle status” that allows them a measure of self determination (economically, educationally and socially) that the dominant group in this country zealously opposes in Black, Indigenous and some Latino groups.
The Black middle-class also has oppositional attitudes…
Black middle class persons understand that racial oppression does not evaporate in the presence of middle class trappings. I would argue that Black people of all classes are subject to more oppositional attitudes than they possess.
As to the subject of standardized test scores, in 2009 a commenter on the Black Reading Scores thread, Janice, pointed out changes in the scores of various groups over time. She also pointed out the ubiquity of test score differentials for dominant groups vs. oppressed groups globally:
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@ Kiwi
“The Black middle-class also has oppositional attitudes. It is the reason why their children score lower on tests than what class reductionists would predict.”
My understanding is that there are a number of theories as to why the gap persists but no consensus on one specific cause nor definitive proof of such cause.
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@ Kiwi
This thesis does not explain or apparently even address why outcomes among different Asian American groups are so disparate. Why do Hmong, Laotians, Cambodians, Samoans, etc. evidence similar rates of poverty, gangs, crime, and so forth as the involuntary minorities?
“Because voluntary minorities do not feel threatened by their subordination, they see society’s norms and values as legitimate and follow the rules. Involuntary minorities feel threatened by their subordination and thus reject society’s norms and values, so they disobey the rules.”
I’m having real problems with this statement. Voluntary minorities do not always follow the rules. There are Asian immigrants who get filthy rich off of what amounts to slave labor and human trafficking, including but not limited to the sex trade. They break any number of U.S. laws in these endeavors. Such unlawful behavior may also be happening among other voluntary minority groups, but this is the phenomenon I’m familiar with. (White immigrants do it, too, but we’re talking minorities here.)
Also, let’s not forget the dirty little secret of widespread cheating among Asian American students, to the degree of one sibling doing the other’s homework and writing the other’s papers, or individuals who will pose as someone else for money and take standardized tests for them.
Yes, I know not all Asian Americans cheat. Yes, I know many of the Asian Americans who are guilty of this did it under duress and against their will due to intense familial pressure and sometimes physical abuse. I know white kids cheat, too. But the fact remains that cheating is against the rules, against society’s values and norms, and yet it is widely practiced in the immigrant/first generation cohorts.
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“Why do voluntary and involuntary minorities have such different life outcomes despite members of the same race belonging to both groups?” – Abagond
Abagond, people create imaginations and/or wear a mask to escape from who they really are all the time. Through this escape hatch or facilitation, they become someone other than themselves. I believe that things of this nature cause intra-personal and inter-personal disturbances in the long run. After all, emotional disturbance is the price of denying yourself.
At bottom, I believe that “different life outcomes” largely depends on whether the individual chooses to wear a mask or a collective mask as a group in order to assimilate with the dominant group, thereby, becoming an honorary white person and thus, a life absent of hardships
In summary, show white Amerika that you’re passive and not a threat in any manner and you’ll be just fine. (examples of coonery: Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Tiger Woods, Clarence Thomas and Mary Elizabeth Taylor, just to name a few)
Examples of denying themselves:
Tiger Woods – Growing up, I came up with this name: I’m a `Cablinasian,’ http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970423&slug=2535313
Charles Barkley – Barkley responded, saying he didn’t think racial profiling was right but that he could see why white officers stereotype black people because ‘some are crooks’. (I guess we don’t have white crooks in Amerika) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3688558/Charles-Barkley-Black-people-better.html
Michael Jordan – “I make shoes for white suburban kids, not the poor black kids. That would be like opening a restaurant for people without stomachs.” (SMH)
http://www.celebtricity.com/michael-jordan-i-make-shoes-for-suburban-whites-not-poor-black-kids/
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what about north africans in france?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-05/frances-death-spiral
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I agree however if those elements were included the purpose of the post would be different. As a foundation or frame of reference, it’s appropriate for a larger discussion on the historical and social context that you mentioned.
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However, voluntary minorities develop strong counter-frames by their third or fourth generation, even if they have no involuntary group of the same race to assimilate into.
There won’t be any 3rd or 4th generations ‘voluntary minorities’ as the women will all marry white men and their progeny will be considered white several generations down the line. Problem solved.
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For anyone interested, Kiwi is once again being deceitful. His source actually says that the surgery in question found…and I quote:
These data therefore support the idea that Asians and blacks in CA faced similarly profound degrees of racial prejudice among whites throughout the early 20th century and likely well after WWI.
The articles mentions that Japanese experienced the least compared to Blacks and Chinese. I do believe the prejudice for Chinese and Japanese only changed due to the war. Not an ongoing prejudice.
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Evidence, please! Do groups of Africans drop their African identities to become Black Americans or is it a choice made by individuals? How about Black Americans opting for African identities, do they experience a shift in attitude? Is Issa Rae a Black American failure?
Nonsense. Refugees don’t get to choose, they are chosen for services rendered to the USA in destroying their native lands. Cubans, Hmongs, Vietnamese, etc.
I’m found of pointing out to you the criminality of your Chinese kinsmen who run all kinds of rackets, you’ve disappeared them with a few keystrokes on whatever you chose to write your nonsense on.
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“found” should have been “fond”
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Kiwi is basing this post on the research and theories of anthropologist John Ogbu, who was himself an immigrant to the US from Nigeria.
I would need to read Dr. Ogbu’s works to get a better idea of this framework, but at the moment it seems to me to have flaws. It veers too closely to blaming the victims while ignoring the immensity of the barriers placed in front of them.
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Plus it seems like the argument is for assimilation into the majority culture.
Kiwi, are you seriously ok with Native Americans giving up what little is left of their identity because it is somehow oppositional to the majority and holding them back, as this framework suggests?
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@Kiwi
“Racial prejudice surveys found that Whites were more racist towards Asians than towards Blacks in the Western United States during the early-mid 1900s and that racial barriers were greater for Asians than Blacks in California during that time.”
From 1849 to 1965, the “Western United States” and “California” were low on both general population and Black Americans. As a larger and more visible share of the population, I’m sure Asian Americans of all ethnicities suffered racial discrimination from the White majority.
My point about Black people absorbing the worst of White racism both mid-century and now is based on the whole country, not just selected parts. N.E. Asian Americans and South Asians have achieved high social, educational and economic mobility because they were not seen as threats to the White majority. In fact, the White majority utilized those Asian groups to bash “troublesome” (to them) outgroups such as Black people and Chicanos/as by pointing to those “Model Minorities” that you are touting in this post.
This post seems eerily similar to the Euro-American propaganda of the 1980s and 1990s. That propaganda sought to drown out the viewpoint of Black people who were facing a sustained White backlash against the Civil Rights and Black Freedom movements. The multiple crises that backlash spawned included:
☛ Community disinvestment: retail stores, schools and housing stock (both public and private).
☛ Militarization of the police and concurrent overpolicing of Black neighborhoods.
☛ Crack Cocaine epidemic which devastated Black communities
☛ Rollback of civil rights
As things got worse for Black people, White propagandists sought to convince Black people that it was their own fault. The propagandists said if Black people would just behave themselves, work harder, respect White authority and be more positive the system would work for them like it does for the “Model” minorities.
Some Black people attempted to follow that recipe only to find themselves pulling a sugar encrusted vinegar pie out of the oven: sweet and alluring on the outside, inedible on the inside. Abagond wrote about a Black family that contorted themselves into “acceptable Blackness” only to find that they were still just “ni**er$” to White people and their allies.
That post, “Elite upbringing does not protect Black kids from racism”, describes the vinegar pie one Black family bit into. The father, Lawrence Otis Graham … confessed to the Washington Post, and therefore to the nation, that, “I taught my black kids that their elite upbringing would protect them from discrimination. I was wrong.”
Abagond continues:
Kiwi, it is easy for people wearing a one pound ankle weight to outpace other people who are chained at the starting line with one hundred pound ankle weights on each leg. Easier still to admonish as “oppositional”, the people who make your own personal privilege possible.
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School quotas are the only barriers to Asian success? Are Asians better educated than African immigrants? Are all Black Americans failures, how do you account for the successful one? Before you start with the affirmative action bs, know that successful blacks existed throughout the occupation of the Americas by Europeans.
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“the successful one” should be “the successful ones”
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“People like you are the reason so many Black immigrants try to dissociate themselves from Black Americans.”
@kiwi
Within the realm of reasoned debate, you have gone beyond the bounds of facts, demonstrable facts…and instead have chosen, like our current POTUS, to attack the messenger with false attribution, instead of a thoughtful debate of IDEAS contained within the opposing message.
Therefore, YOU LOSE…BIGLY..!!
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@ Kiwi
“Your argument, like Afrofem’s, is that involuntary minorities face barriers that voluntary minorities don’t face.”
No, I think voluntary minorities do face significant barriers. I also think the white majority plays the two groups against each other to keep them occupied with battling each other instead of taking on white supremacy and institutionalized racism.
And I further think that, regardless of its application to other groups, this theory is reprehensible when it comes to Native Americans. Many (not all) of the “anti-social cultural values” found within that group are actually a form of resistance to forcible cultural extermination and an insistence on preserving a culture that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
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@Kiwi
“…Burakumin in Japan exhibit many of the same social issues Blacks in America do (slums, poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, single mothers, low IQ, truancy, crime, gangs) but Japan doesn’t have the same history as America you list above of militarized policing, drug war etc.”
You are right. The Japanese made a conscious decision to not oppress the Burakumin with militarized policing, etc. They have chosen other means of making the lives of their (outgroup) country men and women miserable——ways that fit with Japanese cultural values and attitudes.
American White people oppress their fellow citizens in ways that fit their cultural values, attitudes and history. Every society finds a different way to achieve the same ends.
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@ Kiwi
What do you suggest that Native Americans learn from voluntary minorities? How can they dig themselves out of that hole while still retaining their language, their religion, their ceremonies, their sacred days and places, their lifeways, their social and kinship structures, their clans and moieties, their traditional healing practices, etc.?
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As an actual ‘temporary voluntary minority’ let me put it like this. I think the author’s touching on it with the ‘frame of reference’ point.
Voluntary immigrants (let’s call them VIs for short) typically do not identify with the country that they’ve moved to. And this is pretty much the case regardless of how long you’ve been around. We’re foreigners living in a foreign country and we expect to be treated as foreigners. People who’ve lived hear for 40, 50 years will start a sentence with something like “back home…” – where “home” is the homeland.
Usually our mental frame is already that of a dominant group, since most of us belonged the dominant group in our home countries.
This also depends on when you arrived in the country. People who arrive in their adulthood (roughly age 20 or more) are VIs and they’re the ones I’m talking about. By that age your racial/ethnic ‘frame of reference’ in your psyche is pretty much set.
People who arrive as children (roughly say age 10 or below) tend to adopt the frame of reference of an ‘involuntary minority’ because their parents made the decision to come, and they’re frame of reference in their psyche is shaped as that of a minority, which is how they experience life in their adolescent years.
People who arrived in their teenage years (this is referred to as the ‘1.5 generation’ since they’re neither 1st generation immigrants nor 2nd generation children of immigrants) are interesting. From my anecdotal experiences, I’d say usually they arrived in their school years and unlike the older immigrants who don’t really participate in American social circles outside work (i.e. they stay in their ethnic/national immigrant bubble), these 1.5 generation immigrants are thrown head-first into American society and experience racism and the sudden loss of privilege. So they tend to be very aware of racism and privilege dynamics.
VIs, on the other hand, are largely apathetic to these concerns. While they’re physically in the new country, mentally they’re still back in the homeland since they socialize mostly with peers from their home country, consume media from the home country, etc (all of which I don’t see a problem with). They’re more concerned about discrimination, colonization that happens on a geopolitical level as it affects their home countries.
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@Kiwi
“…Blacks weren’t a visible population in California when the study says they were present in significant numbers.”
Black people are always a “visible” population in this country wherever they reside. The question is did Black people outnumber Asian Americans in the Western USA (including California) from 1849 to 1965? Did Black people have the same history of intense economic competition with working class White people in the Western USA during that period?
What cultural, social and political shifts in the 1960s and 1970s made it possible for NE Asian Americans to move from domestic workers, farmers, gardeners, small shop owners and factory workers to doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and corporate chiefs? Ditto for South Asians? Ditto for Afro-Caribbean and African immigrants?
I’m not discounting the work involved by those groups or the fact that immigrants tend to be the brightest and most ambitious of their respective home cultures. That is why they left their homes. They wanted more than they perceived their home cultures could provide. Humans have always done that and likely always will.
However, hard work alone is not sufficient in America to move a people forward. All of our forebears worked hard and some had more to show for it in the end than others. Those are the factors that concern me most . How that work is rewarded (or not) is what matters. From my perspective, rewards for hard work or even the opportunity to engage in rewarding work without arbitrary barriers is based on social, cultural and political structures that your theories don’t address.
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@ FOB
Good points.
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@Kiwi
I read the study because I quoted directly from it above. No paraphrasing or anything. So your real issue should be with the study contradicting itself. Not that I pointed it out.
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@ Kiwi
“Voluntary minorities don’t take up an oppositional culture but they still retain their identities”
Really. How much Chinese culture have you retained versus what you would have retained had your parents remained in Taiwan and raised you there?
You’ve said in the past that you don’t speak Chinese fluently. Language may not be essential to your sense of having a Chinese American identity. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve seen (and defended) the same attitude among non-Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans.
But you cannot compare your experience with language retention to that of Native Americans. Chinese isn’t in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth because you don’t have native fluency. Spanish isn’t going to disappear any time soon. Native languages in the US are all classified as either threatened, endangered, or extinct.
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In fact here is what your little source says fully:
In the US generally, whites express profound prejudice against Chinese, Japanese and blacks, with slightly stronger prejudice against blacks and Chinese at the national level. Prejudice in the two West Coast samples is even stronger against both Chinese and Japanese than blacks, which is consistent with the central role of CA as the cultural and political center of historical anti-Asian activism. Moreover, these prejudicial preferences appear relatively stable over the entire 1926-56 period, with temporary deviations in 1946 associated with WWII national allegiances. These data therefore support the idea that Asians and blacks in CA faced similarly profound degrees of racial prejudice among whites throughout the early 20th century and likely well after WWII.13
The bold section indicates that what Afrofem said was correct in that nationally blacks and Chinese faced a stronger prejudice.
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*”This phenomenon is largely unconscious but explains the sense of hopelessness in non-immigrant minority communities in contrast to the sense of hope in immigrant minority communities, even when the latter starts off poorer.”
Economic success is not the only benchmark of well-being that a people may use; it may not even be the most important to them. For one example, I refer you to the Sioux, who are still refusing to touch a bank account of Black Hills money (now at more than a billion dollars) because it is the sacred land, not the cash, on which their hope rests.
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@FOB: Great post.
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I should add that there is a perception among some immigrants in the US that American minorities believe their struggles are the be-all and end-all of anti-racist struggles and that any non-white immigrant who is not following their recipe is not doing their part. From the perspective of the immigrants, this is seen as a form of “American arrogance”.
For an immigrant the struggles of his or her homeland, and in general the global south, may be far more important compared to the struggles of minorities in the global north, for two broad reasons: one – the sheer number of people affected by the former is so much more greater, and two – it is the development of the global south that has the potential to upend the global racial status quo.
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“Obedience to authority: Because voluntary minorities do not feel threatened by their subordination, they see society’s norms and values as legitimate and follow the rules.”
Undocumented immigrants have brocken the law by choice when they came here voluntarily and illegally. They do feel threatened which is why most are law abiding because they don’t want to bring attention to themselves.
Furthermore as FOB put it “Voluntary immigrants typically do not identify with the country that they’ve moved to. And this is pretty much the case regardless of how long you’ve been around.”
This is true of undocumented workers as well. They retain their culture and close ties to the counties they came from.
This is a good topic and an interesting discussion.
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@ Kiwi
Burakumin: Descendants of caste considered ‘tainted’ face new discrimination in Japan
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burakumin-descendants-of-caste-considered-tainted-face-new-discrimination-in-japan-a6791141.html
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@FOB
“…there is a perception among some immigrants in the US that American minorities believe their struggles are the be-all and end-all of anti-racist struggles”
Many Americans of African, Latino, Indigenous, Arab and Asian descent understand the connection of our anti-racist struggles with global anti-racist struggles in the Global South. Many of us are also acutely aware of our part in those struggles since we reside in the belly of the beast, so to speak.
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@ Kiwi
“Really, now? You believe Natives are incapable of doing any of that without digging themselves into a deeper hole? This is how White liberals earn their reputation for condescension toward people of color.”
That’s not what I said. I asked you what you believe Natives should learn from voluntary minorities in order to get out of the hole while still taking into account the primacy, even the urgency, of cultural retention to Native Americans.
I am interested in what you have to say on that account — but I’ll also note that it could equally be seen as condescending for a member of a voluntary minority to assume that involuntary minorities can only get out of the hole if they follow the same path as voluntary minorities.
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@ Kiwi
“It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to read.”
That’s unnecessary. Do you want to have a discourse or just fling insults?
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@ Kiwi
I’m not going to continue to argue my intentions with you. Back to my main point: you’re saying that involuntary minorities blame the white man instead of learning from voluntary minorities how to succeed. So, my original question remains unanswered: what do you as a voluntary minority have to teach Native Americans which will get them out of that hole?
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@ Kiwi
Excuse me — I’ve stood up for Asian Americans over and over again on this blog, including some very tense arguments with people I like, respect, and admire but disagree with when it comes to downplaying and minimizing the discrimination and hurdles faced by Asian Americans. I have been supporting and advocating for Asian American rights since the 1980s. That doesn’t constitute sticking up for voluntary minorities in your eyes?
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@ Kiwi
This is what you said:
” instead of learning from each other, it appears the involuntary minority response is to blame all their problems on Whites and ridicule voluntary minorities for wanting to be honorary Whites.”
and
“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Involuntary minorities insist on digging. Voluntary minorities do not. We can talk about the fact that Whites were the ones who made the holes in the first place, but that doesn’t preclude minorities from learning from each other. But instead of learning, it seems the general attitude is to insist on blaming others and digging deeper holes.”
This was my paraphrase of what you said:
“involuntary minorities blame the white man instead of learning from voluntary minorities how to succeed.”
Where is the paraphrase faulty?
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@ Kiwi
“[Solitaire:] ‘Do you want to have a discourse or just fling insults?’
“That’s my point. You stick up for involuntary minorities (but certainly not voluntary minorities) when everyone is doing the same thing.”
No, it’s because you started it. You began flinging insults on your very first comment in the thread, entirely unprovoked, and you’ve done the bulk of it so far on this thread.
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Kiwi
Those are my quotes, but if you read the full context of the text it still goes on to say ” These data therefore support the idea that Asians and blacks in CA faced similarly profound degrees of racial prejudice among whites throughout the early 20th century and likely well after WWII.”
It’s not my fault you attempted to be deceitful, again, and not present the full data in an effort to discredit what Afrofem said. Presenting a source that highly supported her.
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Kiwi
Any of the supposed “stupid” things I said came directly from an Asian and source has been provided. Sources you then dismiss and call stupid because you don’t like having Asians call out people like you. Maybe if you had half a brain you would have better insults than “you’re stupid”.
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An Scríbhneoir Gael-Mheiriceánach
That’s goddam hilarious. Thanks.
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Solitaire
One thing I have realized over the years is kiwi throws out insults when he A) Has no argument or B) Got caught in a poor thought out argument of his making or C) got caught lying. He then attempts to discredit said commenter as stupid or some other insult to take attention away from the facts that was pointed out to him. The slinging of Mudd, so to speak, clouds the room and usually allows for his mistake to go unnoticed.
Not sure if anyone noticed but he has been twisting Afrofem argument and accusing her of goal post shifting. 😏
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that was part of obamas appeal. he was an African African American.
not a nonAfrican African American.
like the rest of us.
the irony is that even nonAfrican African Americans like him better than they did their own. look at how they excoriated any nonAfrican African American who had the audacity to criticize him. case in point, Cornel West.
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Steve Harvey is typical in chastising the foremost black critic of Obama. Typically he used a racial slur to do it, calling West a monkey. Of course he would have been highly outraged if someone had called the African African American a monkey.
(https://youtu.be/F3K1ZQlWkUU?t=7m)
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@ Kiwi
“You said Blacks absorb most of White racism due to their population size.”
My contention is that Black Americans absorb the bulk of White racism because Black people are the primary out group in this country. It is Black people’s historical pariah status, at the bottom of US society, that makes Black people the primary targets of White Supremacist animus. That is true whether Black people are a small percentage of the population (such as in the Western USA) or in the majority (such as in the state of Mississippi).
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@ Kiwi
“Asians face lower job ceilings than Blacks, especially in tech. Blacks also get paid more for the same qualifications.”
Prove it. Links? Sources?
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@Kiwi
“…no mention or explanation of how discrimination leads to oppositional culture or why voluntary minorities avoid adopting that mindset.”
“Oppositional culture” and the notion of “voluntary minorities” vs. “involuntary minorities” are your pet theories about social inequality in the USA. Those notions are meaningless to me.
I also disagree with your on ideas of liberal vs. conservative and how they relate to inter-ethnic relations.
Since I see the world differently and you have dropped your facade of semi-reason, I’m out of this conversation.
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@”Some involuntary minorities choose to become voluntary by reinterpreting their place in society but this is rare” contradicts:
Since the descendants of “voluntary minorities” never “came to America by choice”, they can’t ever be “voluntary minorities” by your own definition.
Clearly you were sloppy and need to go back and rethink the definition of “voluntary minorities”.
@”Whereas voluntary minorities usually join the middle class in one generation through hard work and education”
This is just not true. The 2010 census showed that poverty rates actually increased for the children of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Ecuador and El Salvador (and others).
In fact, a MAJORITY of their children were “AT OR NEAR poverty” at slightly higher levels.
In fact, these “at or near poverty rates” for so-called “voluntary minorities” from the countries I specifically listed above were higher than the rates for ALL so-called “involuntary minority” groups.
So your fatal mistake was making the so-called “voluntary minority” experience synonymous with the typical East/South Asian “voluntary minority” experience.
And that’s why the article doesn’t come anywhere close to making the (desperate) case you hoped it would.
Too bad.
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” on Mon 27 Mar 2017 at 04:56:28
Kiwi
@ gro jo
Hardly. Asians face lower job ceilings than Blacks, especially in tech. Blacks also get paid more for the same qualifications.”
In other words, you’re arguing that Affirmative Action is undermining “Asian” success. Evidence, please. How about quantifying the ‘damage’ done to the “Asians”? While you’re at it, breakdown the “Asian” category into its ethnic parts showing how much they ‘suffer’ from Affirmative Action. How many Chinese-Americans are forced to sweat it out in dingy, ghetto, Chinese food joints instead of taking their rightful place in the boardrooms of the USA. The same is in order for Koreans, Indians, etc.
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@ Sharina
Thanks.
I’m really flummoxed by the whole “you just want to blame everything on the white man” accusation. Being white myself, what would that avail me?
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@ Kiwi
I think the more essential part of my statement was the sentence you ignored: “I have been supporting and advocating for Asian American rights since the 1980s.”
What I do out there in the real world is far more important and has a greater impact than any discussion I take part in here or elsewhere on the web.
Nothing is stopping you and your fellow voluntary minorities, Asian or otherwise, from volunteering in after-school tutorial programs in, say, Oakland to give direct assistance to involuntary minorities. Nothing is stopping you from working with your university to build a pipeline into the STEM fields with one or more tribal colleges and/or majority-black or majority-Hispanic public school districts.
You can lecture until you’re blue in the face, or you can reach down into the hole and offer a hand up.
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‘involuntary minorities’.
how Orwellian.
wtf is this?
who finds this remotely amusing? and not offensive at all?
(https://youtu.be/PYpTr_Kqj_4)
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“…Involuntary minorities have no other homeland so they compare their status to Whites, which makes their outlook on America negative. They see America as robbing them of freedom and opportunity.”
Missing from these theories are the attitudes and behaviors of White/Euro Americans. They developed and maintained the original “oppositional culture”. For centuries, they have traversed the US (and the world) exhibiting all manner of anti-social and maladaptive behaviors: stealing everything in sight, despoiling the land and water for profit, running forced labor camps (plantations), murdering anyone they encounter, raping, cheating and lying.
Yet, the very groups most affected by Euro American “oppositional culture” and “oppositional traditions” are labeled “negative” and “low IQ”. The groups the author describes as “involuntary minorities” have had to face constant interference in all aspects of their daily lives by the dominant culture in the form of:
➤ state and vigilante violence
➤ political disenfranchisement over a period of centuries
➤ destruction of dwellings, settlements, neighborhoods and traditional territories
➤ forced removal from the aforementioned territories (currently called gentrification)
➤ forced removal of children to boarding schools and the foster care system
➤ patterns and practices ofsuppressing cultural traditions such as potlatches and Black leisure activities
➤ constant public mockery of a targeted group’s speech patterns, children’s names and items of clothing, etc.
I disagree that so-called “Involuntary minorities” are negative because they “compare their status” to the dominant group. I think any negativity comes from the constant trauma of living in a society that systematically degrades them on a daily basis. A system of abuse that respects neither age, gender nor disability.
Yet, it is the people who are injured on a daily basis who are admonished to “trust, obey and be positive” with no attention or analysis of the group that is source of their pain.
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@Kiwi
No worries because I will continue to post until you get it. If Afrofem’s claim is “Black Americans absorb the bulk of White racism because Black people are the primary out group in this country”
And your source says “with slightly stronger prejudice against blacks and Chinese at the national level.”
Then it does not matter if you keep trying to point out “Prejudice in the two West Coast samples is even stronger against both Chinese and Japanese than blacks” Because the west coast does not account for what they face on a whole. Basically you presented a source that supports her and all you can argue is one sliver of the entire thing to try to refute her and it really doesn’t? Would you like me to present the actual numbers in your source so you can see the sample sized used as well as the difference in numbering among the groups? OR Do you feel good just knowing you are actually the stupid one?
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Kiwi
Of course your link said it was similar, but it is similar to the Chinese and not the Japanese. You happily left that out in your attempt to be deceitful. However, if we look at the charts of your source it shows a weighted average of .92 blacks, .82 Chinese, and .83 Japanese. It’s average simply shows .83 blacks, .87 Chinese, and .83 Japanese.
In my eyes the Asian and black experience are different period. No group experiences the same thing or to the same degree. Your issue is you believe it is the same and often pull out things from the centuries ago that Asians do not face as a means to claim it as grievance they face today. Natives have very real grievances they face today, so do blacks and Hispanics and their grievances are life and death situations. Not “white men won’t let me in their schools”. Matter of fact there has been a rise of police brutality against Asians and that deserves more attention than the nonsense you choose to argue with people about.
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@Sharina
“Natives have very real grievances they face today, so do blacks and Hispanics and their grievances are life and death situations. Not “white men won’t let me in their schools”. “
Well said!
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@Kiwi
“Children of Latino and Caribbean immigrants assimilate into involuntary groups of the same race in the US and take up oppositional attitudes. ”
Your post never actually makes that claim, FYI.
Just shows your dishonesty.
And again, to correct you, children of all “voluntary minorities” can only be “involuntary minorities” by your own definition.
Nonetheless, while your argument fails on that and many other counts, the big reason it fails is because it doesn’t take into account the fact that most “voluntary minorities” in the US by your own definition are “Latino and Caribbean immigrants”.
As of the 2013 Census ACS, 52% are from Mexico and Latin America. And that doesn’t include the Caribbean or the “African immigrants” you pointed out in your post.
So if “Latino and Caribbean immigrants” are your exception to the rule, then you’re excepting the majority of “voluntary minorities”. Obviously the statistics don’t support the premise of your argument.
So sorry!
“Had you actually read the post, you would have realized that. ”
Had you actually written a post based in fact and not emotion/opinion, you’d not have made a fool of yourself by overgeneralising a group (“voluntary minorities”) based on the experiences of a minority within that group (Asians, European immigrants, etc.).
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@ Kiwi
You’re assuming I feel white guilt.
Looking at the tutorial and TEFL volunteering I have done since the 1980s, I’ve worked in about equal numbers with voluntary minorities and involuntary minorities. Also some war refugees which I’m still confused as to where they fall into your proposed groups. Also some individuals whom I guess would be called voluntary majorities? i.e. white immigrants from Europe. Also some white native-born underclass — you know, the people you referred to above as white tr*sh.
It is apparently beneath you to condescend to use your abilities for the good of anyone but yourself and your family.
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As far as the STEM pipeline, that’s something my spouse is involved in currently. He’s also trying to get an Asian American Studies program started. He’s working to increase the numbers of African American faculty in the STEM fields and Asian American faculty in the Humanities. And so on, because it is possible to address multiple issues at once.
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@ Kiwi
“You like to “reach down” and “help” involuntary minorities”
It’s your metaphor, not mine.
If you see someone stuck in a hole in the ground, you have a number of options. For example, you can ignore the person in the hole and walk away. You can stand over the hole shouting that they’re lazy and no good for not climbing out of the hole. You can complain to others about how lazy and no good that person is that they can’t get out of the hole. You can reach your hand down and try to help pull that person out of the hole. You can go find a rope or a ladder to assist the person in climbing out of the hole.
Whether your metaphor is valid or appropriate is another subject entirely.
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“causal mechanism[s]”
That is the central weakness of the arguments you have cobbled together. Your arguments locate causation of social inequality in the US on Black people and others. It is not Black people’s lack of obedience, trust or conformity that is the causal factor. The “maladaptive and antisocial” behaviors you decry in Black people are responses to antisocial and oppressive behaviors by Euro/White people over the course of generations.
Those Euro/White behaviors have become systematized and focused over the centuries. The people who perpetuate this oppressive system not only possess the power to maintain this system, but to propagandize themselves and others into believing that the people they are injuring are the cause of social ills not the recipients of social ills.
The real reason groups your labeled “voluntary minorities” do well in this country/system is that they are relatively invisible to the oppressive power structure. They live in those liminal spaces between oppressor and oppressed; they are not loved and they are not hated.
They get to live in relatively stable communities with minimal interference by agents of the State and they enjoy strong strong financial, cultural and kinship connections with one another. Their sense of agency is strong since they chose to come to this country seeking opportunity and they get to utilize that agency to build decent lives for themselves and their children.
Finally, let’s be clear, though you threw lots of ingredients in this muddled stew of an argument, the two main groups you are concerned with in this screed are African Americans and Chinese Americans. You have had a personal axe to grind against Black people for some time now. This post is just one more anti-Black attack. The images you chose for the post make that clear: a Chinese family group and “blackface” hands with rusty chains.
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@ Afrofem
“The images you chose for the post make that clear: a Chinese family group and “blackface” hands with rusty chains.”
Your comment prompted me to click on the links provided at the very end of Kiwi’s post as sources for the images.
The Slayerment article, which is where the images of the chained hands comes from, really bothered me. It’s full of Broken Records that in the past I’ve seen Kiwi argue against very effectively.
But the Feisty Thoughts article and a related article linked to within it are different. I think they’re worth a read.
One point that leapt out at me is actually in the screenshots of a texting conversation within the first Feisty Thoughts post, where the author’s friend describes how her Korean mother doesn’t like to talk about the terrible experiences she’s gone through and was surprised when her daughter told her that African Americans don’t like to talk about their terrible experiences, either.
It leapt out at me in part because I’ve had similar conversations many times with white people. Whenever an incident of racial prejudice on campus is big enough to make the town news, I often hear white community members saying, basically, “They’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” And these people are always surprised when I tell them that, no, this isn’t the only racist incident to occur on campus in the months or years since the last big blowup. They are always shocked to find out that many acts of racism are documented and dealt with on campus each year but never make the news, and that many more go unreported.
This attitude about black protests is so prevalent in the majority white mainstream that I’m sure Asian immigrants pick up on it and don’t realize it is a misconception or false stereotype. Add to that the emphasis placed in most Asian cultures on swallowing your bitterness and not revealing the shamefulness of a past filled with poverty and hardships. That’s a perfect recipe for cultural misunderstandings, faulty judgments, and miscommunication.
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I think Dr. Ogbu missed an important point regarding African Americans, which is that they as a group have long wanted to voluntarily become full-fledged first-class American citizens.
I keep thinking about the Reconstruction Era. The newly freed slaves didn’t want to go to Liberia or anywhere else in Africa (a point that free blacks like Frederick Douglass had drummed into Lincoln’s head over the course of several long meetings during the war). They wanted to be U.S. citizens, free like anyone else, with the same treatment and opportunities as anyone else. It was only after the KKK and similar white supremacist groups began their reign of terror, after the federal government withdrew its forces and Jim Crow began to be established, that the back-to-Africa movement gained steam.
I keep thinking about the mixed-race sons who had been sent by their southern white fathers to Europe where they could get an education and live freely, and how at the end of the Civil War they immediately left Europe and went back home and got elected to the southern state legislatures and started trying to build an equitable society for both blacks and whites.
One of anthropology’s great strengths is that outsiders studying a culture often see patterns that insiders do not. But at the same time one of anthropology’s great drawbacks is that outsiders may not know enough about the culture and the history of the people to avoid misinterpeting their data.
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@Resw
“Had you actually written a post based in fact and not emotion/opinion,”–Exactly all of this!!!
@Solitaire
Anytime. You shouldn’t have to explain what you do or how you do it. Thing is most of what kiwi writes is likely based on a theory he has produced. Not much else I can see it as. The problem is his theories never stand up to the high scrutiny that any theory should stand up to. This is primarily how race realist function. They have a theory but the theory falls short because it can’t face the facts.
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@Kiwi
” you’re too deceitful to admit it.”—I’m too deceitful? This is my first comment on the thread pointing out what it actually said “These data therefore support the idea that Asians and blacks in CA faced similarly profound degrees of racial prejudice among whites throughout the early 20th century and likely well after WWI.”
Seeing how I originally pointed out that it said similar, I once again get to lavish in the fact that you only showed deceit dear.
Afrofem said it was worse for blacks and the numbers I presented on weighted average, on your source mind you, indicates that much. So really you are ignoring the data and focusing on wording “Similar”. You were still wrong.
“But since I’m the one who wrote it, you took issue with it.”—Wrong. I have yet to comment on the post itself so much as the theories you pop up with in the comment section. Heck thought abagond wrote it, but never read the post sooo….this is another wild theory that pretty much goes nowhere.
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@Solitaire
Thanks for suggesting a deeper read into the links to Feisty Thoughts. I liked the way the blogger presented her material. I really loved the intelligent and sane comments her audience contributed.
I will add more thoughts later…again thanks.
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@ Kiwi
“Not if you’re a minority.”
I know many people who are minorities who do in fact work towards the common good for all. Your hole metaphor is faulty in that it assumes people are stuck in different holes from one another. I’m just going to dispense with the metaphor and say that people who are held back by white supremacy and institutionalized racism from being everything they could potentially achieve are still capable of helping others. If you don’t want to, well, that’s your choice.
You never have answered my question of how exactly you propose that involuntary minorities learn from voluntary minorities to stop digging deeper. Are they just supposed to look around and observe and learn by example?
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@ Kiwi
“It shows in the way you view voluntary and involuntary minorities differently”
Uh, those are your terms, and you’ve set them up as two very different groups. I’ve only been using the terms as an attempt to stay within the framework presented in your post.
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@ Kiwi
“There you go again with your talk about “helping” minorities in all your condescending White liberal glory. The fact that you think minorities can’t learn from each other”
Please read it again. I was specifically talking about minorities helping each other.
I have not once said that minorities can’t learn from each other. What I’ve been asking you is: Within this framework, what mechanism(s) do you (or Dr. Ogbu) propose by which involuntary minorities can learn to employ the same successful strategies as voluntary minorities?
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Yawn, is this bs still going on? And now for something completely different, similarities between African and Japanese(Asian) cultures.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqjdqcYZ6t4)
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@Kiwi
Here goes the deflection from what I said to position yourself in the right after several post of proving you were WRONG.
“The study found that Asians faced greater racial barriers in California than Blacks.”—I never disputed that it did not say that, but California is only one state on the west coast. You ignorantly used that argument against Afrofem who took a national position and not a one state. You can cry all day about what one survery from one state said, but it does refute her position. The other article has nothing to do with the point I was making. It was basically your deflection.
“You have yet to make a post that is on topic or not an effort to derail.”—It would be a derail on my part if we weren’t actually debating the very source you presented. One that you just proved you didn’t read past the one line about CA. The numbers I posted were directly from the chart on your source. Too bad your own source made YOU look bad.
Oh but I will continue to run my mouth because it has been very fruitful in exposing the illogical nature of which you speak. You spoke on a national level and all your presented was one sentence from one source about one state all the while ignoring that your one source basically helped another.
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Doesnt*
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“Here you go, stupid:
“For example, descendants of Mexican immigrants become Chicanos while descendants of African immigrants become Black Americans.””
As you know, that statement says nothing about “Children of Latino and Caribbean immigrants”.
But that’s bold of you to double down on your lie when everyone can still read what you actually wrote.
And since you’re making that claim now (after writing your post), what’s stupid is excepting the vast majority of “voluntary minorities” from your theory about “voluntary minorities,” as I stated before. It is the same tactic employed by white supremacists.
So in summary:
1) your definition of “voluntary minority” contradicted your theory that their children can “choose to become voluntary”
2) you lied about a claim your article never made
3) you doubled down on that proven lie and
4) you made a fool and bigot of yourself by excepting the majority of “voluntary minorities” to your theory about them, which makes it a stereotype.
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@ Afrofem
I’m glad you found it to be a worthwhile read and look forward to hearing your thoughts when you have time.
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@Solitaire
The Feisty Thoughts post, “Asian Immigrants and Black Lives Matter”, has some interesting passages. I like how the blogger, Erna, digs below surfaces and brings to light the why many Asian American immigrants lack compassion for African American issues and protests. She illuminates the hidden river of unresolved Asian American pain, especially in older immigrants, who due to cultural factors tend to keep their wounds concealed. Erna writes:
http://feistythoughts.com/2016/01/11/asian-immigrants-and-black-lives-matter/
Those passages made me think of my grandparents and the ways they simply endured and stuffed their pain into the back rooms of their souls because daily life was filled with the demands of survival: dealing with hostile and demeaning behavior from White people, putting up with the color caste system within the Black community and trying their best to raise healthy children———all the while working twelve and fourteen hour days for decades.
This also made me think of how many Black folk believe that they don’t need the services of mental health therapists. They feel they should be able to endure depression, incredible stress, unending anger and emotional exhaustion because our ancestors survived much worse conditions and somehow made it through. They did——at great cost. Many Black folk also carry the emotional pain of past generations, unresolved and festering. A similar burden of pain Erna describes as prevalent in older generations of Asian American immigrants.
One commenterto that post, Eliana, summed it up this way:
It seems a lot of us are in need of “sharing, lamenting, crying…and healing.”
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@ Afrofem
Thank you for sharing your reaction. I’ve seen the same hidden pain with my in-laws, who were children during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. My spouse only recently found out his mother had two more older siblings than he was aware of, both of whom were executed when caught doing resistance work. During their conversation about those siblings, his mother realized he was typing notes about them into his phone and vehemently insisted he erase everything “because you never know who might read it and then you will be in trouble.” There was also a baby sister who was killed that no one will talk about.
Most of what Erna wrote about her mother had to do with her life before immigrating to the U.S., but she did mention that her mother said when she came here, people would yell at her to go back to Vietnam. My in-laws have had, and continue to have, similar experiences, but they don’t talk about those much, either.
“This also made me think of how many Black folk believe that they don’t need the services of mental health therapists. They feel they should be able to endure depression, incredible stress, unending anger and emotional exhaustion”
&
“It seems a lot of us are in need of ‘sharing, lamenting, crying…and healing.’”
I agree so much and would add that many of the people who so desparately need therapy due to this type of trauma simply can’t afford it. This is something I’ve often thought about: that therapy needs not just to be de-stigmatized but made readily available and affordable. If we ever get a national single-payer health system, I would like to see therapy included and for it to become routine to guide people who have experienced these types of trauma into taking advantage of those services. I remember you’ve written before about, I think it’s called post-traumatic slavery syndrome or something along those lines? I do believe it exists, and perhaps some of the “oppositional behavior” Kiwi is talking about comes out of that trauma. Stuffing that pain deep down inside doesn’t make it go away and does affect subsequent generations.
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@ Kiwi
Thank you for the book recommendation.
Is there a particular reason for the hostility?
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@Kiwi
How is is .92 similar to a .83? It isn’t. There is a .09 difference between the two and your chart shows 1.00 as the most prejudice. So if blacks have a .92 then no the Asians aren’t experiencing similar. Secondly her argument was not that it was due to population size. That is your straw man. Also your study never mentions population size. So your attempt to adjust for population size is poorly construed seeing as you have no idea what the population is at the time of each of those studies. Studies that were taken at different time periods. Thirdly the study nicely separates Japanese and Chinese, so your poor attempt at trying to claim lay the umbrella “Asian” claim is even more pitiful. Your whole idea would fall apart if say some other black ethnic group was added to the mix. ROFL everyone who proves you wrong becomes stupid. Oh I am perfectly on topic, because if I wasn’t my post would have been long deleted. Another tactic where you cry off topic when proven wrong.
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@ Kiwi
“Part of it is you not taking issue with the statements made by people like Afrofem. Part of it is realizing that you may not even see it as important.”
But I have in the past, even the recent past. Sometimes in these discussions I’m not sure who exactly is right as far as statistics, history, etc., and am reserving judgment and following the course of the debate. Sometimes I agree with or at least understand the points that both sides are making.
Is the hostility because I don’t side with you on every last thing? Because you don’t feel like anyone is coming to your defense?
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@ Kiwi
“I never said anything about helping people. That’s what YOU keep harping on about because that’s what White liberals do.”
I don’t deny being liberal in my politics, but I think you’re pigeon-holing me into the wrong stereotypical group. The “white tr@sh” you described above? That’s who I am. That’s where I come from. That’s who my people are.
There has been too much poverty in my life and in my family for me to want to see anyone stuck in that situation. If you want details for proof, just ask.
If I harp on helping others, it’s because I barely got out and only because there were people who reached down and gave me a hand up.
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@ Kiwi
“Obviously, you don’t believe that but you act as if Afrofem is better than what she really is. A cold-blooded racist.”
I don’t believe it but I also don’t believe Afrofem is a cold-blooded racist. For one thing, I’ve seen her mull things over and revise her opinions — and not just in my conversations with her but with other commenters here, and even sometimes just in her reflections over stuff she’s read elsewhere. There’s constant growth and stretching in her mind. I’ve learned a lot from her. I don’t agree with her on everything (and vice versa), but that doesn’t make her a cold-blooded racist.
I know you’re really angry at her over some things she said. I can understand why, but I also feel at times that you aren’t really listening to her or hearing what she says. Perhaps that’s how you feel about her as well, that she isn’t really hearing you; I don’t know.
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@Kiwi
“That’s your opinion.”—If numbers could be based on opinion you might have a point, but they are as blunt as they get. So in the end it is not my opinion, but a statically reality.
I’m well aware of the range of numbers in the study, as number actually go as low as .03 for blacks, but seeing as number can go that low and they still come out at a higher average for prejudice is alarming or at least should be on its own merit. The numbers are very close, not doubt about that, but being close still does not refute her claim.
“Based on this, the number for Blacks should have been 1.0 and the number for Asians 0.005. The study makes clear she’s wrong.”–Based on the quote of Afrofem you presented, I would like to explain how she is. In most of those studies Blacks did have 1.0 and averaged very close to it. However, based on that analogy it would not indicate as such. It simply means it is easier to progress with little obstacles. Little obstacles doesn’t mean you face no prejudice. Duh.
“he does make her argument about population. You were just too dumb to notice.”–Nah, you were just to dumb to understand what you were reading. You claimed “Afrofem said that prejudice against Blacks was greater due to population size, which means if you adjust by population, prejudice against Asians was more severe.”
In what you quoted she noted that during those time periods population was scarce period in the west coast (Not just for blacks). Going on to say that Asians being a more visible population did get the majority of white racism in the West Coast and CA. She isn’t denying that Asians receive it the most in the west coast.
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@Kiwi
“Descendants include children, stupid”
You do realise we can read what you wrote. Your post said, “Mexican immigrants” and “African immigrants, not “Latino and Caribbean immigrants”, as you’re saying now.
” take it up with Abagond”
You wrote this post, not abagond. When I have issues with something abagond writes or does, I never have any problem letting him know.
And while I’ve already made a fool out of you and it’s absolutely unnecessary to add fuel to the flame, I’ll do it anyway.
Not counting the “Latino and Caribbean immigrants” (the majority) that you made it clear were specifically excluded from your theory, your claim that the “voluntary minority” group, “starts off poorer” is of course another claim you can’t substantiate.
Again, you really should have consulted the statistics because you would have known that NEWLY ARRIVED immigrants (especially the ones
who are NOT “Latino and Caribbean”) aged 25 and older have a higher percentage of Bachelor’s degrees (or higher) than native born Americans, and far higher than “involuntary minorities”.
Since there’s a direct correlation between educational attainment and income in the US, then “voluntary minorities” (excluding “Latino and Caribbean immigrants”) “start off” with far higher earning potential than “involuntary minorities”.
And of course that’s not the only advantage with which they “start off”.
So better luck with your next guest post!
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I added the pictures to the post, the See also section and “A guest post by Kiwi:”. The body of the post is just as Kiwi sent it to me.
The opinions expressed in a guest post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect my own views. I offer them here for discussion.
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@Kiwi
Added.
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@ Abagond
Re the book Kiwi recommended here:
I would like to suggest a follow-up post about Dr. Ogbu’s “accomodation without assimilation,” whether written by Kiwi or yourself.
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^ *accommodation
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@ Solitaire
Thanks for sharing the examples of post-trauma upthread:
In years past, I have known or worked with a variety of refugees from Eritrea, Vietnam (Afro-Asians) and Cambodia. The trauma they endured in their home countries and described to me was difficult to hear. Some people told me of atrocities they witnessed, life in refugee camps and the fear they still carry with them years later and thousands of miles removed.
Some refugee women felt forced to stick with their community out of a sense of familiarity and safety, even when they had to deal with domestic violence and abuse from spouses, in-laws and other community members. Interacting with “Americans” outside of their communities was a frightening prospect. Those fears were heightened in their dealings with a Black American. They had to learn to move past negative stereotypes of Black people and I had to learn to move past stereotypes of them.
I think too often, various groups in the US are unable to see the humanity and shared pain other Americans because we view each other through the distortions of the American media. Working past those distortions to see other people as they are and speak candidly with them takes a lot of work and trust building.
Sometimes I’ve made meaningful connections. Just as many times the static between us was so great I gave up in frustration. I found it was always worth the effort because I learned so much. Now when I walk past an Eritrean, Cambodian or Salvadoran on the street, I immediately think: what is their story—-what have they seen—–how have they dealt with their pain?
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@ Afrofem
“I think too often, various groups in the US are unable to see the humanity and shared pain other Americans because we view each other through the distortions of the American media.”
I agree.
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@ Afrofem
“Working past those distortions to see other people as they are and speak candidly with them takes a lot of work and trust building.”
It is a lot of work and it isn’t easy. We as humans tend to be emotionally defensive of ourselves and our own group. Sometimes that keeps us from hearing what someone else is trying to express. Sometimes that keeps us from clearly expressing what we are trying to communicate. I have trouble with this like everyone else. It takes conscious work and effort. It does get easier with practice, but I still have times where I feel I’ve failed miserably.
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@ Solitaire
Good idea. If Kiwi does not want to do it I will.
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@ Abagond
Thanks
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@”If Kiwi does not want to do it I will”
Really? Another post that completely ignores facts? Is abagond deliberately destroying what’s left of his blog’s reputation?
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[…] Source: Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities […]
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