Towards a better, browner future

Not exactly Desi, but interestingly close. Marginal Revolution points us at a NYT article that examines the case of the only county in the nation where the median income for Blacks exceeds that of Whites (51K vs. 46K respectively). The other thing that makes it interesting? It’s residents aren’t traditionally African-American but rather, West Indian.

Despite the economic progress among blacks in Queens, income gaps still endure within the borough’s black community, where immigrants, mostly from the Caribbean, are generally doing better than American-born blacks.

An earlier Malcom Gladwell article looked into some of these disparaties and observed -

…The implication of West Indian success is that racism does not really exist at all—at least, not in the form that we have assumed it does. The implication is that the key factor in understanding racial prejudice is not the behavior and attitudes of whites but the behavior and attitudes of blacks—not white discrimination but black culture. It implies that when the conservatives in Congress say the responsibility for ending urban poverty lies not with collective action but with the poor themselves they are right.

And, as Alex at Marginal Revolution notes, Gladwell tries hard (and somewhat unsuccessfully) to argue against the most obvious implication - put simply that Culture rather than Race is the primary determinant of success.

So what’s the Desi angle here?

… the Model Minority story is perpetrated by the Man to divide, conquer, and reinforce his hierarchy of powerWell, one of the ongoing, underlying debates at Sepia Mutiny is whether the Model Minority story is perpetrated by the Man to divide, conquer, and reinforce his hierarchy of power (see here, for ex.). For me, it’s tough for me to square that argument when many of the same folks who accuse the Man of crudely ignoring the diffs between Muslims, Bengalis, Sikhs, Afghanis, Hindus, etc. now suddenly accuse him of being able to distinguish a West Indian from an African American on something other than credit scores come loan-time.

Now given SM’s leftward drift of late, my right of center position probably comes across as flaming right. BUT, I’m still forced to look at results like the West Indian case above and argue that culture, rather than race drives these results. It’s pretty darn hard to construct a better experimental test case (although I’m a big fan of this recent one). Consequently, I’m skeptical about dispelling the Model Minority argument simply because opponents contend its supporters have a nefarious motive. The world of motives and intentions might make for great narrative drama (Arnold Kling once noted that this is the great, albeit ultimately detrimental, advantage of “type M” rather than “type C” arguments). But when rubber meets the road, the argument has a tough time holding up empirically especially relative to the clear data above.

What brings this entire debate so precariously close to the third rail, is the way folks - occasionally on both sides - conflate Race and Culture. This destroys a much needed precision in the conversation (if you want an example of this, just give the comment threads here a few minutes before some turd destroys precision with a blanket “uncle Tom” comment or the like).

When “conservatives” make Model Minority type arguments, it hits leftist 3rd rails on several levels. There is a leftist article of faith that all cultures are equal (except, only half jokingly, American redneck culture which must lose all such comparisons and is responsible for all the ills of the world). Making an argument about cultures having unequal outcomes sounds suspiciously close to arguing that races aren’t equal - BUT IT IS NOT. Or, if Western culture happens to come out on top in some such comparison, it reeks to lefty ears of neocolonialism. Or that Racism never did or still doesn’t exist - IT DID and DOES. But test cases like the West Indian case above give us valuable insights and hope for a world where culture and race are less inextricably linked and where dialog can be more constructive. What are the tactical things they are doing differently from their racial cousins? In this case, Thomas Sowell & Gladwell do note one example -

When the first wave of Caribbean immigrants came to New York and Boston, in the early nineteen-hundreds, other blacks dubbed them Jewmaicans, in derisive reference to the emphasis they placed on hard work and education.

For the Left, the Model Minority argument also attacks a core contention that unequal political power is the source of (and thus answer to) unequal economic outcomes and a host of other issues. What are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to do when West Indian’s aren’t Black Enough to be saved by amalgamating political power underneath them?

Opponents also conflate race and culture in a different way when they argue, for ex., that the Myth must be false because Indian cabbies clearly don’t make as much $$$ as Indian doctors. Perhaps the Indian doctor lives in a culture (albeit narrowly defined) which is different from the cabby’s and, for that matter, a good % of India? Afterall, we certainly know of household-to-household “cultural” differences with regard to education, ambition, etc. even within our extended families. And perhaps Indian culture as a whole is going through a cultural transformation which is why this generation has a considerably different economic opportunity vs. their forefathers?