(Just a link in support of the above)

-RS

This neatly undercuts any class argument. Simply put, the prevailing culture of black male youth is holding its members back; any other explanation would have held back their sisters!

-RS

I think this is probably a larger factor than the “not cool to be clever” thing. You find enough of that among white kids too, and in highly segregated black schools in the US. Segregation doesn’t address that.

Of course, in the real world all else is rarely equal. I understand the people who would consider this option seriously and I understand why they would suggest it. I’m just not sure it will work as well as they think or in the way they want.

The absence of black fathers from the the households in which their children are growing up is not unrelated to the US habit of mass incarceration. Lots of them are in jail; lots of others were in jail and now don’t have jobs. I guess you can blame the socialists who run the criminal justice system for that, if you can find them.

>> Thank you left-wing, socialist, welfare state. > The solution to the problem is to find a way to keep black fathers in the family. In the US 7 out of 10 black children are growing up with no fathers in the house.

1. I’m light brown. Which class do I go to? Can I choose. If I can choose, can anyone choose?

2. I look black, but I think the white kids are going to get a better education, and make better contacts that will help them in their future, so I want to be in their class. Can I go?

3. I’m white, but I have low self esteem and lack positive role models, so can I go to the black people’s class? If I get a tan can I go?

4. I’m an Australian aborigine. I look black, but genetically I’m as unblack as humanly possible. Which class should I go to? Do I have to give a tissue sample to prove I’m not mainstream black?

5. My mother looks white but my dad looks black. Do my brother and I go to different classes because our skins are different colours?

4. I started off black, but I got whiter. Do I have to change classes?

5. I started off white, but I got blacker. What happens to me?

6. I look white, but I sound black. Which class do I go to?

7. I’m adopted. I’m white but my family is black. Which class do I go to?

8. I’m black, but I have positive role models and I feel that learing is cool. Can I go to a special class for black kids with high self esteem and positive role models?

9. I’m Japanese. Where’s my class? It’s not fair if I have to stay in a class full of dull whites if the blacks are going to get their own class. Where’s my Japanese class? And don’t try and lump me in a class with Asians. I look Asian, but I’m not the same as them. We should have classes based on which language your parents speak.

10. I’m an ex-nazi. I have a pair of calipers and some books written by Joseph Gobbles. Can I get a job with the education department putting children into the correct racial category? I have some friends from South Africa who also need jobs.

11. I’m a plastic surgeon. Is it okay for him to tell parents they need to make their children look white so they’ll get into a white class and get a better education?

12. I think that rather than racial segregation, we should treat children as individuals and give them whatever help they personally need to lead fulfilling lives, reguardless of their skin colour. Is this possible or am I just a crazy idealist?

What sort of mechanism is at work here? Is there some reason to think that the wealth and income of someone’s grandparents would ordinarily be related to that individual’s academic achievement? While still recognizing that there is a significant achievement gap when parental income and wealth are held steady?

I mean, I’m a bit skeptical (meaning just inclined to look closely, not saying the claim is wrong) of this as a way of demonstrating that class, not race, is the issue. (Couldn’t we go back another generation and say that slavery, not race, is the issue? If your great-grandparents were counted as someone else’s wealth and produced someone else’s income, … Would that be persuasive?)

I’ve been puzzling a bit about this myself, and might do a post on it when I’ve thought more about it.

Here’s the story: when you control for parental income and wealth you get a not-tiny gap in achievement. When you control for grandparental wealth as well it almost evaporates. i.e black and white kids who have similarly placed parents and grandparents do almost as well as each other in school.

I think this does matter. Rothstein explains it nicely in the piece bza linked to in the first comment. Apparently middle class African American parents simply have less parental support to fall back on themselves, are less ecurely middle class, and are not expecting an inheritance. This might matter a lot for how their children regard college: eg whether they anticipate getting a free ride or not (I can’t tell you how many White Americans I’ve met whose children had their whole Ivy League college paid for by grandparents. My kids, by contrast, can simply rule out expensive private college, unless I take a big chunk out of my income to save for it).

SO I think it is kosher to control for grandparental wealth (but am open to persuasion). But then I got to thinking: what about controlling for whether a parent is incarcerated? I bet that if you control for parental income, wleath, and incarceration status, you close the gap a bit too. But that ignores the fact that African Americans are much more likely to be incarcerated than Whites, because they are African-American. So I agree that its not straightforward at all.

There must be people reading this who are professional and can explain to us what’s legit and what’s not.

wendi: do you have a source for that claim? I’m just being lazy, and will follow this up eventually, but if you have an easy source that makes it easier for me!

On role models: one of Ronald Ferguson’s striking (and not much commented on) findings (in one of his two contributions to the Philips/Jencks volume) is that the optimal teachers for low-SES African-Americans are high SES-origin Whites. Its ages since I read it, so I can’t explain it all. Anyone really serious about this topic should read the whole volume (and remember it better than I have…)