Yes, I agree, and that diversity of views within the political ideologies has become more refined and specific with time, such that I now struggle to ever use the labels “conservative” and “liberal” in any meaningful way. What do I call the cabal of populists who followed Donald Trump so fervently? What do I do with their nationalistic, isolationist and protectionist views? When I was a kid, those people were blue collar Democrats. Republicans, to them, represented the elite and special interests. They certainly don’t look and sound like the conservatives I grew up with. Big government for this and not for that? We’re all all over the place now.
Anyway, this was someone who was sympathetic to AA policies and who, despite being a strong Irish Catholic, was pro choice. That kind of liberal, and at that time, the label fit. And still, the assumptions and the unconscious bias persisted.
No. Not every white person who came to this country at roughly the same time as Africans was “subjected to opportunity in abundance.” This is a false dichotomy.
Not as many as you think, I daresay; and Georgia was started as a penal colony.
It is historical recklessness for you to suggest that every white person who came to this country was “one subjected to opportunity in abundance,” without acknowledging that there is a considerable amount of nuance in who had what “opportunities in abundance.”
Apologies in advance for the misuse of the term abundance. Yes, you are correct. The clarification between being a slave for life and not has many nuances.
That whole discussion about “opportunities in abundance” mirrors the current resentment that low privilege White people sometimes have when the term “White privilege” is thrown about. Even though minorities in similar SES situations typically have even less privilege, it usually pushes people into opposition when they are told that they have something that they have little of. In addition, the term “privilege” often connotes an unfair advantage that should be taken away, rather than something that should be extended to all, so the term may cause people to want to be more protective of what crumbs of “privilege” they do have.
And there it is, I dare say. Not so much a pedantic concern about nitpicking technicalities in the name of avoiding historical recklessness, but rather a dramatic political expression.
It may not be that Asian immigration patterns are all that unique, but that the Asian American population is heavy with post-1965 immigrants selected for high education and their kids and grandkids. In contrast, African recent immigrants are small in number compared to the total African American population, and European recent immigrants are small in number compared to the total European American population.
I.e. the recent Asian immigrants define the educational attainment stereotype for Asian Americans, while recent African and European immigrants are too small in number compared to the population of African and European Americans to affect the educational attainment stereotypes for those groups.
You make a very salient point about an issue that is often thrown about carelessly in political arguments. The “model minority” rhetoric is strong and prevalent in these discussions.
There is this assumption that all immigrants who come here are poor and have nothing. But even those whose wealth was not portable can bring their intellectual wealth with them, such that even if they start out with nothing as measured by money and assets, they really don’t start out with nothing. People are imprecise in their assumptions about immigrants and assume they all line up at the same starting line.
If there are sub-groups who have the wrong “culture” or “habits,” even if that group has been represented in the country for generations, the salient question to ask is, “why?”.
This might make for an interesting read (it’s just a summary but perhaps one should have a read…it’s compelling given the horrors the Jewish individuals have been subjected to in Germany…“As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer.” The very reason Einstein was such a staunch advocate for Blacks in America is because of what he experienced in Germany.
Not to mention not having to worry about the constant stress of being scrutinized for having the wrong skin color. Being free of social & mental shackles & stress is an enormous privilege that results in far better outcomes for a person over the course of his/her life.
“Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh”
“In America” and “for as long” were key phrases in his comment that would distinguish what’s being discussed quite clearly from the Holocaust. It’s hard for me to fathom that it’s hard for anyone to fathom that the history of African-originated peoples in the Americas is uniquely brutal. Sure, other groups, especially Native Americans, have been treated horribly and brutally, and you see the fallout from that history. But slavery and its concomitant social injustices, it would seem obvious, is a particular kind of bad.
Even with all your negative stereotyping most universities again, like Harvard or Yale, are filled with academic automatons. From Yale:
“The single most important document in your application is your high school transcript, which tells us a great deal about your academic drive and performance over time. We look for students who have consistently taken a broad range of challenging courses in high school and have done well.”
Without a doubt, being an academic automaton is a necessary but not of course, sufficient condition for getting into a place like that.
“There are legions of academic automatons out there.”
lol, yes because guess what, every selective college has a ton of academic automatons, more than 75% probably if you look at the SAT/ACT split.
Note, I’m not academically accomplished by any stretch but I do respect them.