Today's "Gee, I'll Just Make Some Stuff Up" Moment...

Little Matty knows how to pick 'em.

Sunday we were treated to the musings of a college sophomore on the subject of discrimination against short, fat, ugly people (also known as Dennis-ism). Now we get a young man named Jamelle Bouie, who is a blogger/free-lance writer attempting to break into journalism (i.e., probably unemployed) explaining race, marriage and economic mobility:

C.H. at Democracy in America flags a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts on the effect of marriage on economic mobility for children:

Messrs DeLeire and Lopoo find that marriage has a positive effect on economic mobility for children of all races. Among those who are born in the bottom third of the income distribution, 50% of those born to married parents climbed to the middle or top third as adults. Only 26% of those whose parents divorce moved up. Somewhat surprisingly, a greater share of those born to single mothers moved up, 42%, but the size of this sample is relatively small.

Nevertheless, marriage explains only part of the gap in mobility rates between white and black children. Fifty-six percent of all black children in the middle class fall to the bottom third as adults, compared with 30% of white children. But when parents are continuously married, this 26-point gap shrinks to 12 points. For many other measures, though, family structure only slightly reduced the racial gap in mobility rates. “On the whole, family structure is not the culprit,” explains Mr DeLeire.

I don’t have any firm numbers here, but my hunch tells me that part of the achievement gap among children is attributable to the housing segregation. Middle-class blacks face significant housing discrimination, and on average, are far more segregated than any other racial or ethnic group of comparable means. Large numbers of middle-class blacks are clustered in disproportionately poor neighborhoods, which tend suffer from poor schools and other social services. What’s more, middle-class blacks have fewer educational opportunities than their white counterparts and they lack access to the “achievement networks” that characterize white middle class life.

Huh.

For a guy who doesn't "have any firm numbers" (and it's not like his link provides much in the way of concrete evidence, either), Jamelle has managed to come up with a pretty comprehensive damnation of Whitey, don't you think? Note that when I say "Whitey", that's me talking. Understand, too, that I'm assuming Jamelle doesn't mean all white people are nasty segregationists. That would be racism. As I have no way of looking into Jamelle Bouie's heart, I'm going to assume he isn't racist. So, what I'm willing to bet is that the sort of white people he is talking about are white people like you and me...

And not like Little Matty and the sensitive progressives who read blogs at Think Progress.

I don't have any firm numbers to back that up, so call it a hunch.

Comments

[The Commander]

How can he say, with a straight face, that middle-class blacks lack educational and other opportunities? The entire machinery of the Federal Nanny mandates sepcial access, opportunity, and funding for them. No one offered me a free education at Harvard, for instance. Everywhere we turn the poor- and middle-class black is a favored recipient of "public" largess. His thesis is laughable.

[richard mcenroe]

Reminds me of Spike Lee bloviating about growing up hard on the mean suburban streets of Roosevelt, Long Island, in the middle of redneck Nassau County. Shoot, before Barry descended from his Hawaiian prep school to show us what real hardship for people of color looked like, Spike was practically writing "Cry, the Beloved Country."

[Eric Blair]

It is so obvious that Matty doesn't actually spend anytime around black people, middle class or not.

Living where I do, I happen to work and live with middle class blacks, and my experience is that middle class blacks live around other middle class blacks, as well as around some middle class whites, depending on the neighborhood.

It is also my experience living where I do that middle class blacks don't really want anything to do with poor blacks any more than anybody else wants anything to do with them, or other poor people of whatever ethnicity.

As the commander notes, blacks are definite recipients of public largesse, and the smart ones take every advantage of it to improve their lot. I can't say I blame them for that.

[Joe Doakes]

Children of married parents who go on to become single mothers descend into poverty as a result of extra mouths to feed and less income to feed them with, not as a result of their parents marital status.

Maybe the children of middle class Blacks who later fell into poverty did so because they became single parents; and maybe the 12-point gap is because Black women become single mothers at a higher rate than other women, regardless of their parents marital status?

Without more data, blaming Whity seems premature.
.

[The Commander]

Can't blame a black dude for taking free money whenever it's shoveled at him with a Federal spade - uhhh... did I say that?

I would do the same.

However, it's clearly asinine to utilize special privilege to rectify the results of special priviliege. Discrimination doesn't end discrimination; one can't destroy something in order to save it.

He who breaks a thing to see how it works has left the path of wisdom.

[Christopher]

So if a group of middle class people are clustered in an area, do they not usually start to gentrify that area to their level of middle classness? If they don't work to improve the area they live in, isn't that their issue to deal with? Money talks, and if you're middle class in a poor area, I'd bet you can do the louder talking.

But then again, I'm 'the Man' (strange, why don't I have more money, power and control? Well, any of those three actually...hmmm...I need to check my 'the Man' membership card...). Apparently, being white and male, I just can't understand any of these problems, and I'm implcitly a racist, regardless of what I actually think about someone. This was very patiently explained to me by a friend of mine in social work.

Oh, and DtP, unless Matty's stand-in author is white, by the approved definition of the progressive left, no matter how much of a bigot he potentially is (hypothetically), he can't be a racist. Only whites are racists, and again, all of us are. By definition, no minority can be since they aren't in the power institutions. This was the follow up to the patient explanation of why I just 'didn't get it' from my friend. I wish I was making this up. I really do- this is the actual thought process that is being pushed in some social work schools and grad programs.

I have a 'hunch'that this explains a whole lot of where this guy's worldview and 'truth' comes from. And just to be clear, I think my friend in social work needs to have his head examined.

[just passin by]

You should explain to your friend in social work that HE just doesn't understand it because he doesn't have work for real; i.e, when people in real business fuck up sales/orders/etc they get their asses fired. When people that work in social "services" fuck up THEIR client's lives, they just get another government paycheck.

[Simon]

How exactly does this process operate ? He doesn't say. At one point he says housing discrimination, at another he says housing segregation.

Is he saying that private property owners refuse to sell to black buyers. Patently ludicrous.

Is he saying that blacks cluster together (by choice) and then those areas get bad government services. He could be saying that in a vague way. But that isn't housing discrimination. That's government discrimination. Again ludicrous.

He doesn't know what he's saying, so he papers it over with a lot of buzzwords -

economic mobility
racial gap in mobility rates
achievement gap
housing segregation
housing discrimination
fewer educational opportunities
achievement networks
relational and geographic proximity to poverty
relational networks

All undefined and meaningless. Stupid dressed up as smart.

[jwest]

1. A lot of valuable time being wasted here.
2. Whitey is to blame.
3. Mostly true.
4. Problem solved.
V/R JWest