On black progress

Coleman Hughes writes,

The evidence against racial progress tends to compare black-white gaps today to black-white gaps in the past. Here, white metrics are used as benchmarks against which to measure black progress. By contrast, the evidence in favor of progress tends to compare black metrics today against black metrics in the past. White metrics do not enter the equation. Crucially, the same data can often be made to look like either progress or regress depending on which framework is chosen.

A striking example that he cites is that the rate of incarceration for black men dropped 72 percent between 2001 an 2017, but the ratio of black to white incarceration still increased.

20 thoughts on “On black progress

  1. C’mon everybody does this and it is up to the reader to understand these variation of claims. And we tend both over-simplify past issues and over-exaggerate current claims.

    1) Both Af-Am and Hi-Am lives have improved a lot the last generation. They are earning more, avoiding jail more and living better lives. (I suspect their black-white gaps will diminish some in the next generation here as we going to have less generational impact on the averages as we move away from the 1970s and 1980s.)

    2) Look at the claims of the Ferguson Effect and crime climbing in 2015! Conservatives hyped this one to deaf about a new crime wave coming when it was statistical noise outside of Chicago and Baltimore.

    3) My favorite left claim is California Hi-Am public school demogrpahic is only 17% when the Hi-Am population is 40%. That is silly as I remember going to Cal State school about 20% of the population was His-Am in mid-1990s and teacher population has a generational aspect.

  2. With respect to income: Have black incomes moved up in terms of what percentile in the income distribution they are? I expect so, even if the gap remains the same measured in dollars, as rich people (disproportionately white) have gotten richer faster than poor people (disproportionately black) in recent decades, so even if black people are moving up relatively in the income distribution, the average white/black difference could remain the same.

    I’d also argue that percentile matters more than absolute gap measured in dollars. E.g. if we go from white people making 50k per year and black people 25k to white people making 200k and black people making 175k, can it really be said that no relative progress has been made? The 25k difference in the latter case is less significant than in the former case.

  3. re: black progress

    “The median net worth for non-immigrant African-American households in the Greater Boston region is $8, according to “The Color of Wealth in Boston,” a 2015 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Duke University, and the New School.”

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/12/11/that-was-typo-the-median-net-worth-black-bostonians-really/ze5kxC1jJelx24M3pugFFN/story.html

    https://www.theroot.com/the-median-net-worth-of-black-bostonians-is-lower-than-1821214855

    • An important caveat here is that the median white householder is married, while the median black householder is not. Furthermore, the median white householder is several years older than the median black householder. Black households also have more children on average.

      Keep in mind, also, that differences in medians can greatly exaggerate differences in distributions. If the median black household has a net worth of $8 and the median white household has a net worth of $50,000, that sounds like a huge difference. White households have 6000 times more wealth than black households! But maybe the 35th-percentile white household has a net worth of $8 and the 65th-percentile black household has a net worth of $50,000. Then white households are only half a standard deviation wealthier than black households.

      Obviously differences in income are an important part of the wealth gap as well. Maybe once you control for permanent income, age, and marital status, a sizeable racial gap still remains. But this isn’t at all clear from the story the narrative pushers are telling. They’re falling to perform the most rudimentary controls, and framing the data in a way optimized to incite racial hatred.

      We need a better press corps.

    • For example, close to half of Puerto Ricans and a quarter of U.S. blacks don’t have either a savings or checking account, compared to only 7% of whites.

      !

    • The fact that Caribbean blacks are almost 50% more likely to own a home (50% vs 1/3 per the excerpts) is a pretty striking number too.

      • I think the statistics on Caribbean blacks is an interesting puzzle. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this topic over 20 years ago using personal anecdotes:

        After I had moved to the United States, I puzzled over this seeming contradiction–how West Indians celebrated in New York for their industry and drive could represent, just five hundred miles northwest, crime and dissipation. Didn’t Torontonians see what was special and different in West Indian culture?

        Gladwell frames the puzzle in terms of how the groups are perceived which falls under Kling’s progressive axis.

        • It’s really hard to come up with explanations when you aren’t allowed to say “self selected group with different genetic profile”.

          • Sure you can say it but you have to treat the statement as an unproven assumption and that assumption doesn’t pass the sniff test when comparing the two groups at the center of Gladwell’s puzzle: Jamaican immigrants in New York and Toronto.

            Gladwell has a richer analysis but it too doesn’t pass the sniff test. He is true to form, however, and masterfully wraps the puzzle in an engaging narrative even if his conclusion misses the mark.

          • I don’t know what the relative profiles of Jamaican immigrants in the NYC versus Toronto. However, the idea of an ethnic group having very different performance based on where it immigrated to isn’t a big surprise to me.

            Muslims in the USA, not bad performance. Muslims in Europe, terrible. Mexicans in the USA, bad. Mexicans in Europe, good. Filipinos in Asia, bad. Filipinos in USA, good.

            Without researching all of the intricacies of Canadian versus USA immigrant patterns from Jamaica, there are a lot of patterns in the “near vs far” and “legal vs illegal” immigration dichotomy I’ve seen over and over in other examples. Once you’ve observed this pattern a few dozen times, does yet another little “mystery” really warrant looking up the same basic story again when you’re likely to get the same results (I got two kids and work, digging through Jamaican immigration statistics in a likely futile effort isn’t at the top of my radar).

          • So for instance here is a guess that if you can disprove I’ll listen.

            Canada doesn’t have a big illegal immigration problem from Jamaica (or anywhere, since it doesn’t border any third world countries).

            Of legal immigrants to the USA things like family reunification and other factors can be a big part. If you’re just looking to get form a third world country to a first world country, NYC is closer and easier to get to then Toronto.

            Jamaicans that immigrate to Canada are likely legal immigrants. To legally immigrate to Canada you need a have a certain number of “points”. These points essentially boil down to a bunch of proxies for IQ and conscientiousness.

            So unless I’m presented with contradictory evidence, I will assume that Jamacians in Canada have been subject to the same selection pressures I’ve noticed time and time again in Canadian immigrants. If it makes you feel any better I like those selection pressures and I support president trumps efforts to make our immigration regime more like Canadas.

          • Read the Gladwell piece when you have some spare cycles. The puzzle is that Jamaican immigrants appear to be a success story in New York and the opposite in Toronto; reverse of your predictions (I think). The irony throughout the piece is whether Gladwell’s Jamaican family are victims or perpetrators of black racism. I’m not engaged in a teaching moment; I think you will find it puzzling as well.

            The three big Jamaican diasporas are in London, New York, and Toronto. I’d be surprised if any important immigration patterns account for the difference in these three communities. I suspect an analysis of the influence of public housing on each diaspora would be more informative.

          • Is this a peculiarity of Jamaicans? Toronto and New York have large diasporas from many countries ripe for comparison between the two.

          • Mark Z, yes the puzzle is specific to Jamaican’s, or more specifically, the slightly broader category of black Caribbeans, or perhaps, english-speaking black Caribbeans.

            The general differences in immigration between the U.S. and Canada, as described by asdf, generally apply to most diasporas but not black Caribbeans for some non-obvious reason.

          • It’s hard to find stats for just Jamaicans so I won’t be able to use them in all cases, but I’ll use West Indians more generally since I can get that. I know there can be a lot of variance in there but his point vacillates between the two and its good enough for our purposes.

            For America median household income is 30k for blacks, 67k for whites, and 52k for Jamaicans, and 47k for West Indians in general.

            So the statement that West Indians/Jamacians are “good black” checks out. And the statement that they still aren’t as good as whites checks out. I’d say stereotypes are pretty accurate here.

            In Canada Jamaican incomes are pretty close to native whites (about 88% of whites). Which is a better ratio than Jamaican immigrants to America. And part of the shortfall in Canada appears to be from the fact that the Jamaican community is younger and more female then the general population in Canada (and thus should be expected to earn less). Interestingly, Jamaican women earn more then native women, so after you adjust for some of the demographic differences the already small gap shrinks further.

            Looking at this and other statistics I think its fair to say that:

            1) Jamaican immigrants in Canada appear to be superior to their US counterparts.

            2) Despite Gladwell’s claim that people are racist against Canadian Jamaicans, it doesn’t appear to be affecting their success in the country at all.

            3) His anecdote about “The infamous Jane-Finch projects, in northern Toronto, were considered the Jamaican projects” may in fact just be an anecdote. People living in the projects are generally on welfare, with all the traits welfare recipients ordinarily have. If those people behave the way he mentions in the article (drugs, crime, wikipedia seems to back this up) should the people observing this behavior not have a negative opinion of it.

            Of course Gladwell makes a sensational claim based on this anecdote:

            “But that was a naïve question. The West Indians were the first significant brush with blackness that white, smug, comfortable Torontonians had ever had. They had no bad blacks to contrast with the newcomers, no African-Americans to serve as a safety valve for their prejudices, no way to perform America’s crude racial triage.”

            Does he have evidence for this claim?

            For one, it should be commented on how utterly expected this sort of incendiary and accusatory language is. These “white, smug, comfortable” assholes who allowed these groups into their country to better their lives and provide them with significant welfare assistance did so only so they could “serve as a safety valve for their prejudices”. WoW!

            Of course these racial prejudices they were so in demand to express required them to import huge societal problems from halfway around the world. And despite it being all about RACE!!!!!, they don’t appear to apply this sentiment too at all to Jamaicans who don’t live in this area and behave like a underclass. All those Jamaicans, despite the evil white man, appear to be doing very well and at being successful integrated middle class.

            How about something simpler. Many Caribbean islands like Jamaica tend to export lots of medical professionals, especially nurses, to the first world. Those people act like middle class professionals, get treated like middle class professionals, and achieve live outcomes similar to middle class professionals of all races. This is part of why numbers skew younger and female for the Jamaican population.

            However, there are probably some Jamaican immigrants that came to Canada on a different track and much more resemble average Jamaicans, and they live in Canada much the same way they lived back in Jamaica. It’s no surprise that looks like a ghetto. People in Canada who see and deal with such people have ACCURATE stereotypes about them, but don’t seem to apply those stereotypes to other Jamaicans who behave differently than the underclass group.

            Since Canada applies better immigration controls than America, its Jamaicans are of a better genetic stock overall.

            American blacks, being some of the worst people in the world, make everyone seem like a “good black” in contrast. People accurately realize that West Indian immigrants behave differently than American blacks (due to superior genetic stock), don’t apply negative stereotypes to them, and the system is basically just.

            So we are all doing fine until some agitprop entrepreneur like Gladwell decides to stir up racial hatred to advance himself and make himself feel good. He’s got his anecdotes, he’s got his motivated reasoning and ignoring of countervailing evidence. His got his heated rhetoric. Whose going to punish him for what amounts to baseless hate speech against whites. Not you.

          • asdf, you are falling back on an oversimplified model, just like Gladwell does. Gladwell falls back on his progressive biases but his narrative is much more than anecdotal when/if you separate the important events from his interpretation of the underlying causes.

            Gladwell’s mother and aunt are Jamaican born and raised twins whose lives followed similar paths until they graduated from university in England at which point their life histories (marriage, work, and immigration) diverged. Gladwell and his cousin’s lives intersect again as immigrants in New York, though we don’t think of Gladwell as a typical immigrant.

            Ironically, Gladwell’s information about the Jamaican diaspora in Toronto is the most anecdotal evidence in the story based on his time as a student at the University of Toronto. His mother’s experience in London, based on her book, and his cousin’s experience in New York, is much better informed.

            The “infamous Jane-Finch projects, in northern Toronto” are key to this. This is a single public housing project that is part of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) with high-density housing areas scattered throughout Toronto. The name of each project is “infamous” since they are highly correlated to high levels of drugs, crime, and violence. This is the important link with the New York story which provides statistics about Red Hook, part of the New York City Housing Authority projects. The New York project are predominantly occupied by black Americans while the Toronto projects are predominantly occupied by the Jamaican-Canadian immigrants or their children. For more irony, Jane-Finch is known for its ongoing gang war between the Crips and Bloods, subsidiaries of their American counterparts.

            Your comparison of average salaries misses the important differences, in my opinion, and emphasizes that the social ills can be independent of the average intelligence/conscientiousness of the community and independent of Gladwell’s racism assumption. Your recognition of the importance of skilled female Jamaican nurses is important in Canada but a comparison of their children with skilled female Filipino nurses would probably show a large divergence based solely on whether they live in public housing. Another potentially useful comparative analysis could be done between Somali refugees (no immigrant point system) that live in Toronto community housing vs. Somali refugees that are sponsored by one of the Mennonite (or other religious) communities.

          • RAD,

            I think you just restated my point and I’m not sure what the disagreement is.

            1) To the extent (for good or ill) that an immigrant group (or immigrant subgroup, like those in the “infamous Jane-Finch projects”) has a different genetic stock those the average for “their race” we should expect their performance to differ from the overall race and match their underlying subgroup genetic profile.

            2) “Your recognition of the importance of skilled female Jamaican nurses is important in Canada but a comparison of their children with skilled female Filipino nurses would probably show a large divergence based solely on whether they live in public housing. ”

            Sure…if you’re living in public housing despite being a skilled nurse you must have a lot of problems with yourself (who does that?). I think I was implying that the skilled nurse Jamaican and housing project Jamaican populations we’re likely different (i.e. that a skilled Jamaican immigrant differs from an unskilled one, and that differences existed before they immigrated). A majority of Jamaican immigrants do not live in those projects.

            3) The reason certain immigrant populations perform better than their host countries is because they are disproportionately (but not entirely) composed of “the best” from the hose countries. That’s why they call it a “brain drain.”

          • Sure…if you’re living in public housing despite being a skilled nurse you must have a lot of problems with yourself (who does that?).

            Who? An immigrant with good eyes or good economic sense or good friends/family. Avoiding these subsidized traps takes special insight or a lack of inside knowledge about available programs.

            Go to Google Maps and search on “driftwood toronto”. Use streetview and go up and down Driftwood. These are Gladwell’s “infamous Jane-Finch projects”. Trees, parks, green space, bicycle paths. Go though some of the streets around York University adjacent on the east. Is there an obvious difference? Now go to Google News and search on “driftwood toronto”.

            My point is that the problems described are social, structural, but independent of Gladwell’s assumptions about racism and your assumptions about group-level intelligence/diligence.

          • @RAD

            1) There are tons of “normal” looking street view slums in my city (usually because the city just build fancy new housing for section 8), but everyone knows they are slums and middle class people don’t live there. If you aren’t smart enough to figure out “that place where people get shot is bad”, maybe you aren’t all that intelligent. Or you have some other way you’ve fucked up that made you broke and you have no choice.

            2) “My point is that the problems described are social, structural, but independent of … your assumptions about group-level intelligence/diligence.”

            You haven’t proven that in any way. I still don’t see a single piece of evidence from you to express this point.

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