One of the most common tricks leftists use, in order to blind the public to the realities of race, is to imply that by controlling for SES (socioeconomic status), they can reveal that race is of little importance. Examples of this tactic are far too numerous to list exhaustively. We find it used to explain away racial disparities in health, crime, education and social pathologies.
In some cases, looking at SES rather than race might be justified. It would depend on the circumstances and goals of the study. What irks me is when the focus should be on race but SES is used to confuse the issue.
If controlling for SES does succeed in eliminating many racial disparities, then we might ask: why not simply use SES (or I.Q. if you prefer) to categorize people as we must and ignore race altogether? Here are three answers to this question:
1) Ubiquitous institutional racism against whites (“affirmative action”) favors blacks, especially in government jobs. Therefore many blacks are artificially elevated to higher socioeconomic statuses. Their incomes are high, they live in nice neighborhoods and they drive new cars – but their inner nature has not changed. Their lower class habits linger on. They, and their children, are just as dangerous to be around as their brethren in the ghettos.
2) Nature created biological races over the course of tens of thousands of years. Though we have known the basics about racial differences for several decades, much remains to be learned. Progress, in studying racial differences, has been stunted because (with the exception of medicine) it is all but illegal to perform such studies. Therefore, much about race remains unknown to us. Faced with a reality of nature and burdened by our own ignorance, the best course of action would be to respect what nature has put in place. The imposition of mass miscegenation upon the younger generation is akin to burning large areas of virgin rain forest without even knowing which species inhabit it or even studying them.
3) Because so much value is placed on “African-American culture” in America today, most blacks who have rightfully achieved higher socioeconomic stations will continue to behave like other blacks in some ways. Even if they choose to “act white”, the odds are that their children will revert to black behavior. This is what is encouraged in schools, the media and by the government. Unfortunately, along with the less destructive aspects of black culture, the criminal aspects will often tag along. Caution is necessary.
The simple truth, which escapes leftist “scholars”, is that SES is a natural outgrowth of race. To “control” for SES (when trying to determine the importance of race) makes no sense. Let us turn things around. Suppose a university wished to show that race has nothing to do with SES – and, in order to accomplish this, their study controlled for I.Q. Hence, only the brightest blacks would be considered in the study. Not surprisingly, we would find most of those blacks in the same SES as their white/Asian counterparts. Such a study would prove nothing.
The underlying fallacy is that low SES, among blacks and Hispanics, is a result of racial discrimination and not lower average I.Q. and higher levels of impulsiveness. I want to see the studies that support this presumption. It is amazing to see the level of scholarship that goes into countless papers – and they are all castles built on sand. No matter how many fancy mathematical formulae, acronyms and specialist jargon their authors pack into them, in the end they have no value because they are built on a false premise.
It is sad to think how much time, talent and brain power has been wasted on “studies” such as these. For hundreds of years, some of the brightest minds of Europe were wasted on alchemy. Is this much different? In the past, they thought they could convert lead to gold. Now they think they can convert one race to another with jargon and flawed studies.
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LOL. I wish the left would talk about Socioeconomic level more than race. Universities and Employers should try to recruit rural lower income whites as they do with inner city blacks as part of their ‘diversity’ plan. The only reason I became a race realist is because the race card is way overplayed by race baiters. Many of us would be willing to overlook race if were not so overplayed.
“1) Ubiquitous institutional racism against whites (“affirmative action”) favors blacks, especially in government jobs. Therefore many blacks are artificially elevated to higher socioeconomic statuses. Their incomes are high, they live in nice neighborhoods and they drive new cars – but their inner nature has not changed. Their lower class habits linger on. They, and their children, are just as dangerous to be around as their brethren in the ghettos.”
It all depends on the attitudes and values that the parents instill in their children. I have seen some well behaved black kids in the affluent town which I grew up in, which consists mostly of jews and asians and some black children who were bussed in through the METCO program who were very well behaved. These children all came from households with ambitious parents who had high expectations for them. I was friendly with one particularly nerdy black boy with Southern parents who still retained their traditional southern values and strong work ethic and all of those who had parents who didnt care about their education and behavior were the violent ones. I have severe asperger syndrome and am terrible at sports so that group of poorly behaved black students would torment me and push me into walls and step on the backs of my shoes. My parents had a teacher meeting with their parents and only two sets of parents showed up. My mom got to meet them and said they were very rude to her as well as my teacher.
Perhaps I should have written “many blacks” in bold. Of course there are those like you describe. By the way, some have claimed I’ve got a touch of Asperger’s myself. I think blogging is ideal for Asperger sufferers since you can write random things and people don’t look at you like you’re nuts!
Ditto on the AS.
That’s interesting Gay State Girl.
I knew that you were never a radical Critical Race Theorist, but I didn’t think you were exactly a race realist either.
As to the level of crime rate regarding the socioeconomic status of whites; well the lower income whites in Appalacia had a significantly lower crime rate than that of blacks. But among the inner city low income white is considerably lower than that of blacks but here in NE, we’ve had problems, up until relatively recently with the South Boston Irish and the Portuguese of Providence and New Beford/Fall River MA respectively. Its true that many of the Irish crime formed largely in response to an influx of blacks and forced racial integration but Boston has a significantly lower black population than other large Northeastern cities. The Portuguese have refused integration with the other white population even though the’ve been here for four generations. (Many of them came to avoid the draft for the Portugese war in Angola in 1899.) They still have resisted higher education and have a high crime rate. One Portuguese extremist set my grandfather’s textile mill on fire in 1983, which is still relatively recent.
It’s a matter (again!) of ideology. Liberals are ideologically committed to SES as the determinant of performance. And more recently, to blaming something called “racism” for the failures of minorities. If liberals had to face the truth about the genetic component determining performance, they’d have to renounce their own liberalism. As with most ideologues, liberals prefer to believe in a pleasant delusion rather than an unpleasant reality. The problem is, they are dragging the entire country down with them.