Dare to Speak of It

Rav Azora has a very good post at City Journal on what he refers to as the “culture taboo”. Here’s his peroration:

White racism cannot entirely explain a whole litany of modern-day problems facing the black community, such as academic underachievement, teen pregnancies, disproportionate homicide rates, and chronic fatherlessness. The overwhelming success of black immigrants, black women specifically, and blacks as a whole in the music industry, professional sports, and even policing suggests that black potential is not eternally doomed or reliant on rescue.

While I agree with his basic point, I think there are some other factors he might want to consider. The “modern-day problems” he talks about did not arise a century ago at the height of Jim Crow and when some of the slave generations were still living. They’ve arisen more recently, many a consequence of urbanization of the black population.

The thread that runs through those problems is poor impulse control. Kevin Drum has made a convincing argument that lead poisoning may contribute to that as well as other developmental problems in black children. As black populations flee inner cities to the collar suburbs (or farther) we may see a real life experiment on this.

Another factor is stress. Stress can raise cortisol levels which may in turn lead to poor impulse control not to mention mental illness. Children not living with their biological parents may increase their stress levels which in turn can reduce their impulse control. It become self-reinforcing. Bullets whizzing by your head in your home and classmates getting murdered has a way of increasing one’s stress level. Again it’s a vicious cycle.

I don’t think the solution to that cycle is the abolition of cash bail. I think it’s demanding higher standards of behavior and better law enforcement in the black community. Don’t patronize black people. They’re not being forced to bear children out of wedlock or join gangs. Those are choices.

There was one thing in the piece I found amusing:

According to a 2012 study by Jesse J. Tauriac and Joan H. Liem that examined disparate academic outcomes of U.S.-origin and immigrant-origin black undergraduate students, only 42 percent of U.S.-origin blacks interviewed in 1998 had pursued college as of 2002, compared with 68 percent of immigrant-origin blacks. A 1999 study found that black immigrants entering college made up 27 percent of black freshmen, an over-representation of more than double their share in the black population (13 percent). A 2007 study found that 41 percent of black first-year students at Ivy League universities were immigrants or the children of immigrants. These disparities persist today, with Nigerian-Americans, for example, attaining disproportionately high educational outcomes.

Notice how that supports a claim I’ve made around here—that set-asides and quotas don’t benefit those most in need but disproportionately benefit the children of Caribbean or African immigrants?