Does systemic racism against blacks even exist anymore?

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every race has an elite, with the whites on top. that is part of the hierarchical nature of humans.

In my opinion, Cyber's comment suggests that well-educated black people are a cultural anomaly, or that the scholarship and insight of any "academic elite" is inconsequential.

I like hearing different opinions from people who have lived and studied the topics at hand, regardless of their skin colour or perceived social status.

like POC themselves say, they have to be twice as good as any white man to get half as much out of our society. so the fact that there is a black elite, despite the worst that amuuuurica gleefully threw them, says more positive stuff about them than anything else, because they still not only persevered but prospered.

I don't think any of the black intellectuals I linked could fairly be called conservative, John McWhorter in particular is a tenured professor at Columbia, a podcast host at Slate, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and a newly minted New York Times columnist. Even Kmele Foster, who's the most heterodox of the bunch, is more like an anarchist than any kind of conservative, just dismissing them as Uncle Toms sucking up to the white man feels like a dodge.

Another fly in the ointment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e ... old_income

According to this, Asians are leaving whites behind in the US, with Indians in particular almost doubling the average white household income, and even many African immigrants doing very well. That makes a purely racism based argument harder to make, as presumably racists don't much care if they're discriminating against a native born dark skinned person or an immigrant.

I didn't actually say that did I...

Being educated and black is not an anomaly, but having money to send your children to college/university is harder for the average black person.

I said black people are entitled to ally themselves with whom they are comfortable with. Black intellectuals are entitled debate the pros and cons of social activism and conservative values and politics. Where they want to fit in is up to them, It's not up to non-black people like myself to judge what they can and cannot say/do/join.

I'll go back to my statistics which are published research, between 70-80% of black people are unhappy with how they are treated. That suggests there is something in the view that they at least perceive there are systemic barriers preventing them access employment, higher standards of living etc...the social science research suggests they are right.

Why would black students need to be twice as good, or persevere more than anyone else?

I mean this sincerely. I'm not discrediting the existence of racism or racial injustice. I'm not trying to be political, because heaven knows I have no interest in politics. Children of all backgrounds go to school and may or may not be bright. The bright ones who are interested in academics or activism apply to college and university. Those schools don't know the colour of their applicants. People are admitted to tertiary education based on their grades and recommendations from teachers. Once in Uni, it's sink or swim for everyone. I can't picture that Universities, especially now, would be failing or dismissing black students based on their ethnicity. Likewise with graduate level funding and grants. Those are based on academic merit.

The only adversity I can think of, is that many inner-city public schools have poor funding, and maybe not as much access to technology or experiential learning.

Is that the difference?

The myth of the model minority also paints Asians as a monolith, when in fact some 23 million Asian Americans trace their roots to more than 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The reduction of numerous ethnicities, origin countries, cultures and historical ties to the U.S. into one racial group leaves the most marginalized Asian American and Pacific Islanders, or AAPIs, out of the equation.

Though Asian Americans have some of the highest educational attainment and median incomes in the country, "the lowest rung on the poverty ladder happens to be Asian, and that is a fact that is widely ignored," says Denise Peck, an executive advisor at the pan-Asian leadership organization Ascend Foundation.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, members of 12 out of 19 Asian origin groups have poverty rates as high as or higher than the U.S. average; at a share of 25%, Mongolians have the highest poverty rates among Asians in the U.S.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/how-the ... -work.html

American schools base their tuition on parents' income.

Even the Ivy League can be free for students facing undue hardship.

At the graduate level, most programs offer full scholarships or funding packages in exchange for the student working as a TA. There are also bursaries and needs-based awards, especially for disadvantaged or minority students.

Some students may not be able to afford moving away for school and they will need to attend the closest college or Uni. That doesn't mean they can't become great scholars, or public intellectuals just like anyone else.

Now most universities are going 100% online because of Covid, and class attendance isn't even required. Students with jobs or family commitments can watch lectures 24/7 online.

My friend in PhD Epidemiology has no online classes at all. She's even doing labs at home.

Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 14 Aug 2021, 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

I work in the higher education sector. Even when black students do manage to attain a place in university there are two phenomena that act as an obstacle. The first is stereotype threats. There are so many walks of life in American society where are black person tries to enter they face the classic passive aggressive response from other people "they don't belong here" and "they are out of place"

When black people enter fields not traditionally open to them (for example swimming or winter sports) they face a second obstacle which is social identity threat. The feeling they don't belong is reinforced by their own community who don't always support or relate to their career choices as it "doesn't fit" a black job. A classic example is Prof Neil De Grasse Tyson who said his biggest obstacle was his own family when he chose to do astronomy at university. He admitted he had to lie to his black friends when they asked him what he was studying because he was embarrassed to explain that he enjoyed telescopes and looking at stars.

There are plenty of Hollywood movies that actually highlight the challenges of black people breaking into working in fields where they were traditionally excluded. It is a real challenge.

It's not the attendance/delivery, it's the financial outlay. All that becomes cheaper is parents no longer have to pay for college dorm/accommodation/food costs.

that is a pertinent aspect of our systemic racism towards POC, yes, the comparatively modest levels of funding for schools that aren't where the moneyfolk live. add to that 400 years of putting POC behind the 8 ball [slavery, then depriving them of the vote, then redlining] and depriving them of the 400 years worth of cultural/financial capital that middle/upper-class white folk take for granted. so many POC simply have not had the chance [lack of accumulated capital transmitted via family lines, plus the development of generational cultural capital, the striving values that mark the middle class] to develop at the same rate as white folks. the only way i can see to fix this [never mind in any truly definitive way, that would require a time machine and the power of god himself], really just to ameliorate this long-term cultural damage, is with the widely hated [among white folk] affirmative action, for generations.

I worked in higher education as well. I put my children through Uni. I know how it works, at least in my country. Diversity is encouraged. Some schools earn additional funding for admitting Indigenous or POC students, so it becomes an incentive rather than a deterrent almost like affirmative action. That's another topic entirely, but my point is that students have equal opportunities to learn, if they want to.

Even if a student doesn't get admitted to Uni, or they choose not to go to Uni, they can become well-read experts in their chosen field. A person wanting to learn, study, and discuss social history, economics, or public policy can read books, read online journals, or listen to podcasts and consortiums. A person doesn't need to have a credential behind their name to have learned opinions about their country, or their lived experience as a human being. With the advent of technology these intellectual people can discuss and debate information with other scholars from around the world, without paying tuition or needing to travel.

I understand your point about Hollywood, and sports (Wayne Simmonds comes to mind -- what a great man he was). Academics is different though. There are no auditions, and no team practices. A person is smart or they aren't. They go to school or they don't, but they can all develop brilliant minds, engage in learning, think critically, and use that gift to write books / inform public policy.

Lumping in tens of millions of poor whites with Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and arguing that white people unfairly have more wealth (wealth inequality) seems to be a statistical deception.

Actually academic is not that different. The barriers I was talking about (Stereotype threat and social identity threat) impacts very bright, intelligent young black men and women. We have the same problem in Australia for children of indigenous, south pacific and east African (sudanese background) who are excluded from many walks of life.

I used to tutor math/statistics for indigenous students and was shocked how many of them (who were getting 90+ in school) could not cope with University. The reasons they gave was exactly the ones I highlighted to you. They basically weren't confident in how they would see themselves because they lack role models and didn't "fit in" in the classroom, feeling lonely and missing home.

As with African-Americans, we have indigenous doctors, lawyers, professionals. But my point is a large number fall through the cracks.

Last edited by cyberdad on 14 Aug 2021, 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Undergrad programs offers merit-based scholarships. If the student doesn't win a scholarship, their tuition cost is still determined on a sliding-scale based on parents' income. In that respect, higher education is financially accessible for students from impoverished families, more so than it is for the middle class.

Undergrad programs also provide opportunities for students in "Work-Study" programs. Schools create part-time campus jobs for lower-income students, so they can have pocket money on top of free or greatly reduced tuition costs. During Covid closures and online learning, Work-Study programs are arranged in the community and the student can still attend classes online. Students are also able to apply for additional needs-based bursaries and subsidies, even if their program is online.

In grad school, it's rare for students to pay tuition. My friend in Public Health and Epidemiology hasn't paid a tuition bill since leaving High School. She had partial scholarships and bursaries along with a sliding scale tuition fee. Her Master's program was free, and she just learned that her five year PhD program is being fully funded. She lives at home and works part time on top of doing her online studies. Her only expense in the doctoral program will be a six month internship in an Indigenous community. She expects that will be fully sponsored by the government.

So in short, even if students are learning online for University, the costs don't have to be extravagant. Worst case, the family incurs a bit of debt which is forgiven by the government when / if they can't repay or find suitable work after graduation. White parents go into debt for their children's education all the time, and if you're suggesting that white parents populate higher income brackets, that means they would have higher tuition rates and, possibly, take more student loans than people with no income at all.