Note that even though the educational achievement goes African immigrant >Asian immigrant > European immigrant > US-born, most of the metrics of financial and economic success go European immigrant > US-born > Asian Immigrant > African Immigrant.
I’ve seen findings to the effect that with each successive generation after the second, non-white immigrants tend to become poorer and less educated, though i don’t remember which group they were looking at. If this interests you enough for me to go find them, let me know.
There are various possible explanations for this...
1) Self-Selection effects cause immigrants to seek education in greater numbers. interpersonal racism distorts market forces (see: various race-resume and job interview studies) to counteract the benefits of higher education. After the 2nd generations any self selection effect dies out and members of non-white racial groups drift economically downward.
I consider [1] to be the strongest hypothesis for the cause of race-related differences in socio-economics regardless of whether or not race-correlated-genetically-based differences in intelligence exist. I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not also genetic differences. Just because racism is sufficient to explain socioeconomic disparity doesn’t mean it’s necessary. Furthermore, we can’t just assume that socioeconomic disparities alone can create the observed trends in behavioral intelligence testing. I don’t think it’s silly to have suspicions that genetic differences exist, but I still feel that it is really silly to be confident that they exist and claim high certainty concerning the magnitude, direction, and nature of these differences when we don’t currently have much general insight into the mechanisms behind genetics and intelligence. It’s even more overconfident to be certain that said supposed genetic differences have large-scale economic consequences. In general, one aught to be suspicious of big ideas with no well-understood mechanisms.
I was going to have a 2) and a 3) alternative hypotheses arguing devils advocate for the race realist side (invoking regression to the mean, affirmative action, etc) as well as a non-race-realist but also non-racism side, but as there appear to be a sufficient number of people who disagree with me present maybe I should just wait for someone who actually holds that opinion to supply those arguments.
I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
If racism is sufficient, then we should not see examples of groups who suffered racism but did not have economic disparities (or had economic disparities which favored them). Are there no such examples?
(I think it’s important to separate out sufficiency- an if-then relationship- and a strong direct effect. It seems likely that the direct effect of racism is to lower economic standing, but to claim sufficiency argues that its direct effect is larger than any other possible combination of total effects.)
Here is one source which lays them out cleanly. Click on the first table.
http://www.asian-nation.org/immigrant-stats.shtml
Note that even though the educational achievement goes African immigrant >Asian immigrant > European immigrant > US-born, most of the metrics of financial and economic success go European immigrant > US-born > Asian Immigrant > African Immigrant.
I’ve seen findings to the effect that with each successive generation after the second, non-white immigrants tend to become poorer and less educated, though i don’t remember which group they were looking at. If this interests you enough for me to go find them, let me know.
There are various possible explanations for this...
1) Self-Selection effects cause immigrants to seek education in greater numbers. interpersonal racism distorts market forces (see: various race-resume and job interview studies) to counteract the benefits of higher education. After the 2nd generations any self selection effect dies out and members of non-white racial groups drift economically downward.
I consider [1] to be the strongest hypothesis for the cause of race-related differences in socio-economics regardless of whether or not race-correlated-genetically-based differences in intelligence exist. I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not also genetic differences. Just because racism is sufficient to explain socioeconomic disparity doesn’t mean it’s necessary. Furthermore, we can’t just assume that socioeconomic disparities alone can create the observed trends in behavioral intelligence testing. I don’t think it’s silly to have suspicions that genetic differences exist, but I still feel that it is really silly to be confident that they exist and claim high certainty concerning the magnitude, direction, and nature of these differences when we don’t currently have much general insight into the mechanisms behind genetics and intelligence. It’s even more overconfident to be certain that said supposed genetic differences have large-scale economic consequences. In general, one aught to be suspicious of big ideas with no well-understood mechanisms.
I was going to have a 2) and a 3) alternative hypotheses arguing devils advocate for the race realist side (invoking regression to the mean, affirmative action, etc) as well as a non-race-realist but also non-racism side, but as there appear to be a sufficient number of people who disagree with me present maybe I should just wait for someone who actually holds that opinion to supply those arguments.
If racism is sufficient, then we should not see examples of groups who suffered racism but did not have economic disparities (or had economic disparities which favored them). Are there no such examples?
(I think it’s important to separate out sufficiency- an if-then relationship- and a strong direct effect. It seems likely that the direct effect of racism is to lower economic standing, but to claim sufficiency argues that its direct effect is larger than any other possible combination of total effects.)
Very well.
Racism is sufficient to lower SES, but if other factors are involved it may be insufficient to induce a negative disparity.