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A thread explaining why it is wrong and racist to blame "black culture" for racial gaps in well-being with whites...apologize for the length, but it's necessary
2/ To say there's a set of clearly defined black cultural attributes that can explain gaps in social well-being, essentializes 40 million people & ascribes to them the dysfunctions of a clear statistical minority of these...(re: crime, out of wedlock birth and welfare receipt)..
3/ Truth is, most blacks do not commit crime (about 3-4% a year), only about 6% of unmarried black women give birth in a given year & most black folks are not recipients of so-called welfare benefits...
4/ Indeed, fewer than 200,000 black adults in the entire nation currently receive cash welfare benefits from the government. That's out of about 30 million black adults in all. So, yeah, not a cultural norm...
5/ Furthermore, black crime rates, out-of-wedlock birthrates, & welfare dependence have plummeted in recent years, and the gaps between black and white rates of these things have closed rapidly ; indeed, far too quickly to be explained by cultural changes...
6/ ...So to claim these phenomena as cultural norms for blacks as a group is to engage in statistical illiteracy and grossly racist stereotyping...
7/ Second, explanations for racial inequity rooted in cultural claims are racist bc they selectively attribute causation to behavioral tendencies that can be seen across racial lines...
8/ So, if a black person does something that fits the framing of those who view black culture as pathological, the behavior will b explained as flowing from culture. But when a white person does same thing, it will be interpreted as aberrant or result of individual pathology...
9/ Though we heard many bashing black culture & communities during the crack epidemic, little of the teeth-gnashing over the disproportionately white and rural opioid crisis has centered around the behavioral rot of the "white family" or pathology of white culture more broadly...
10/ And why? Because the cultural critique of blackness is racism, rooted in group-based assumptions about the dysfunction in question, unlike the way that same dysfunction is viewed when manifested by whites...
11/ Third, the mere fact that a group's presumed flaws are thought to flow from cultural as opposed to genetic or biological characteristics does not acquit the belief of the charge of racism, bc culture-based critiques rely on a racialized and largely static notion of culture...
12/ So when folks argue blacks suffer from 'short-term orientation,' & desire for 'instant gratification' (apparently problems 4 poor blacks but not white derivatives traders), the presumption is these tendencies though not biological, are nearly as immutable as if they were...
13/ This is a biologized notion of culture, which should therefore be understood as no less racist than the once-accepted practice of measuring the skulls of whites, blacks, and Asians to determine intelligence...
14/ Some finesse this by saying it's not inherently black culture that's the problem but rather, the modern welfare state: THAT is the source of the cultural problems in black community. But this is wrong too, and racist AF...
15/ The claim that the black family has been rendered dysfunctional by modern welfare programs is racist in that it presumes African Americans are too weak to remain stable and self-reliant in the face of such programs, whereas whites are strong enough to do so...after all...
16/ in European nations that are overwhelmingly white, safety net programs are far more extensive, and yet they fail to generate the kinds of pathologies conservatives would attribute to welfare provision here. Why?..
17/ The only possible answer, given the conservative position on the harm done by welfare programs, is that blacks have something uniquely wrong with them, which renders them pathological in the face of efforts that have no such impact on others...
18/ Finally, the practical consequences of blaming culture for racial disparities are likely to be no different than were those assumptions rooted in biological theories...
19/ If one believes blacks as a group are less hard-working, less honest and less intelligent ( no matter whether one ascribes these traits to genes or cultural values ) it is unrealistic to believe that such a person would treat individuals from that group equitably...
20/ The odds are better that they would engage in what social scientists call "statistical discrimination," which means assuming that any given member of a group is likely to manifest the tendencies that you consider the group itself to ordinarily manifest...
21/ Bottom line: If racial disparities are not explained by unequal opportunity (past, present or a combination) then the only remaining rationales for them would be those that, by definition, blame the persons at the bottom for their condition...
22/ Either their genes, their values or their cultures are somehow defective compared to the genes, values or cultures of the dominant group...
23/ And it is unlikely that a person could believe in this worldview and yet treat others fairly. If you think that "the problem facing black people isn't racism, it's their own laziness, criminality, or misbehavior," ...
24/ you would have a hard time convincing me that you'd be able to treat any given black person equitably in job interviews, classrooms or when encountering them in a law enforcement context...This is all why cultural arguments to explain inequity are racist and wrongheaded...
