Yet another Substack to which I’d subscribe if I had the money is Noah Smith’s “Noahpinion”. I was recently somewhat shocked in his observations about one of five things he found interesting. As it works out the average income of black Americans is rising, largely due to “selective immigration”:
As you can see from that chart, Black immigrants earn about as much as native-born Black Americans. But 2nd-generation Black Americans earn about as much as White Americans.
There are several important implications of this finding.
First, selective immigration is very important. The kids of Black immigrants to America move up in the world because they’re highly educated. Selecting for immigrants that value education is therefore a way of reducing racial gaps in America — in addition, of course, to the substantial contributions they make to America’s economy.
Second, fears of segmented assimilation — the idea that the kids and grandkids of Black immigrants will end up with economic trajectories similar to those of native-born Black Americans — seem overblown.
Third, America is a land of opportunity for Black immigrants, but not nearly as much so for Black people whose families have been here a long time. This means that the “ADOS” concept — meaning Black Americans whose ancestors were slaves — is probably a useful one. It defines the group of people who most need help from the government. For example, affirmative action programs targeted at Black people in general are likely to award college spots to the kids of elite African immigrants. Instead, in the interest of maximum efficiency and fairness, they should probably be targeted at ADOS specifically.
That is a point I have made for more than 20 years but Mr. Smith doesn’t appreciate the degree of what is actually happening. Black immigrants are benefiting disproportionately from racial set-asides, quotas, preferential hiring or college admissions, and programs intended to promote “equity”. That has been true for 50 years. I think the reason for that is culture (see above). But it bodes very poorly for what he refers to as “ADOS” and which the late sociologist Charles Moskas called “Afro-Americans”.
What Mr. Smith doesn’t address is how do you accomplish what he wants to do? I presume he opposes nativism. Isn’t he supporting it explicitly in this post?
I do subscribe to Smith. He is quite willing to criticize both parties which I think is the sign of someone who is paying attention. Anyway, I dont remember him ever writing about nativism.
Steve
Back when I was teaching engineering, I had direct, regular contact with students from Bahamas, Haiti, and Nigeria. They all had upper middle class backgrounds. The Nigerian was actually an MS candidate. Aside from their accents, they were typical engineering students. As far as I know, the Bahamian and Nigerian went home, and the Haitian stayed in the US. He was in the NFL briefly as a punter and place kicker.
We also had upper middle class and ruling class students from India, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Colombia, Taiwan, China… Somewhat surprisingly, at least to me, all of them, except the Indians (mostly Brahmans), were somewhat Americanized, and socialized quite well with our American students.
So, yes, all of them were successful, and all had passed through a selection filter.
The African chieftains who sold other Africans into slavery also would have had a selection process, at least to get rid of nuisances and enemies.