Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I understood you as suggesting that if people are unhappy with living in a shitty neighborhood, then they always have the option of moving. My skepticism derives from the facility which you seem to attribute to the task of moving.

 

[Dak]

I understood you as suggesting that if people are unhappy with living in a shitty neighborhood, then they always have the option of moving. My skepticism derives from the facility which you seem to attribute to the task of moving.

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2013/may/migration-patterns-reveal-much-us-population-research-finds.html

According to the site, every year about 10 million Americans move from one county to another, and these migration rates vary by age, race, ethnicity and economic conditions over time.
..........
Blacks of every age are leaving large urban centers. At the same time, blacks of every age are moving into suburban counties.

Looks like it is easy enough to be happening. Blacks are getting a shot at that American Dream, moving into the suburbs.

 

[Einherjar86]

Some are, no doubt. Many are likely being left to perish on the streets or be incarcerated.

So let me rephrase. There's no doubt that blacks are moving (after all, gentrification is forcing them to). My skepticism derives from the facility of moving and the subsequent chances of economic success. The types of jobs available in the suburbs are very different from those in the cities, and there are far less of them.

 

[Dak]

The bit about the American Dream was definitely tongue in cheek. The suburbs are dying in most places. Of course that just goes to show that the framework for critiquing migration trends is myopic. Whites leave the inner city, it's racist. Whites move back in, still racist. Blacks "locked out of the suburbs" is racist. Blacks flowing into the suburbs is racist. Race race race. Why aren't more blacks voting for black candidates, don't they know they need to be racist? And on it goes.

But there has been major cross country migration going on for all racial groups. People move toward where they feel they have the best chance of success, and moving is easier the less you have to begin with.

Specifically speaking to the difficulty part for the underprivileged: gubmint cheese can find you at any address, so for the very type that are most likely to leave, it's not like it creates a difficulty with a job (or probably a mortgage either). I even speak with the authority of experience because I somewhat ironically live on gubmint cheese. I've moved multiple times while on gubmint cheese (even cross country), hasn't been a problem.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well, I am a pessimist about this and my response will likely not make anyone happy; but I think racism is endemic to our culture on a historical level. I think there's no escaping it. Slavery is still incredibly recent in our past, and its consequences continue to weigh heavily on the black demographic. Lynchings continued nearly unchallenged until after WWII, and desegregation didn't make any real strides until the 1950s and '60s. The history of institutional racism in this country can be traced as recently as the teenage years of our parents, and there's no denying that it remains an influential factor in the social well-being of blacks today.

Because of all this, there is absolutely no removing it from our generation, and likely from the generation to follow. Simply bitching about these accusations does no good, because the wounds haven't healed yet. There are blacks alive in this country whose parents, brothers, sisters, etc. were lynched, and there are black youths being targeted by police. Anything can be racist because racism is simply part of our cultural DNA. There's no exorcising it.

 

[Dak]

If that is the case (the endemic, inescapable, etcetc nature of race), doesn't that make it fall under the "if it's everywhere it's essentially nowhere" sort of critique?

 

[Einherjar86]

If that is the case (the endemic, inescapable, etcetc nature of race), doesn't that make it fall under the "if it's everywhere it's essentially nowhere" sort of critique?

Race is "essentially" nowhere. Race is an identity.

Race isn't everywhere, but it has the potential to infiltrate any and all vectors of everyday life. Race is never concrete either, it's always in flux - and this derives from a mixture of how races perceive themselves, how they are perceived by outsiders, how they are represented institutionally, how they have been treated historically, etc. Racial identity is constantly expanding and being added to, which makes it a ubiquitous social concern, but not a ubiquitously existing concrete entity.

 

[Dak]

I meant racism*, but I guess that wouldn't really change what you would say.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Whenever I'm in East New York or parts of Queens I look around like "oh yea this is where black people live." as if it is what it is, like it's no problem. I think maybe it's a part of history we want to forget and force them to build their own community without us; right after they were freed from the house and fields they were told "you're free but you can't live here." and were left with nothing to fend for themselves.

 

[Einherjar86]

I meant racism*, but I guess that wouldn't really change what you would say.

I knew you meant racism, and it wouldn't. I was simply saying that if race is already constructed, then racism is a systematic effect of that construction.

Whenever I'm in East New York or parts of Queens I look around like "oh yea this is where black people live." as if it is what it is, like it's no problem. I think maybe it's a part of history we want to forget and force them to build their own community without us; right after they were freed from the house and fields they were told "you're free but you can't live here." and were left with nothing to fend for themselves.

Pretty much.

 

[Dak]

What I would say is "this is where high time preference people live". Areas with high time preference people look pretty much the same regardless of the skin color of those people, and therefore I think is a more useful analytical tool.

 

[Einherjar86]

That would be true, if you could somehow ascertain whether or not most people in a given area are actually "high time preference." I would like to know how exactly one would do this, beyond saying "Well, the economic status of this area suggests that most people are high time preference." But beyond that, why is it then that these areas of "high time preference" people consist mostly of blacks?

You can't reduce the racial demographics to whether or not the people are mostly high time preference or not, even if it is the case.

 

[Dak]

That would be true, if you could somehow ascertain whether or not most people in a given area are actually "high time preference." I would like to know how exactly one would do this, beyond saying "Well, the economic status of this area suggests that most people are high time preference." But beyond that, why is it then that these areas of "high time preference" people consist mostly of blacks?

Areas of high time preference that are mostly black are where blacks have congregated, but that doesn't mean that there are more high time preference areas that are black vs HTP/HTP areas that are white, hispanic, etc.

You can't reduce the racial demographics to whether or not the people are mostly high time preference or not, even if it is the case.

I would say the opposite is true. It's not a reduction if I am talking about the more broadly applicable label, as it were.

Time preferences do have a tendency to be generational, and certainly slavery affected this to some degree for American blacks, but then what about all the nonblacks that also exhibit high time preference that didn't suffer from slavery in America?

As best I can tell the reason that my brother and I appear/ed to people as "coming from money" as we have been told, is because we exhibit LTP behavior, as did our parents, though they spent their time on religion rather than material gain. So although we were materially poor, we didn't "act like it" - as in we took care of our things, worked hard, "got some learnin", etc etc.

 

[Einherjar86]

Look Dak, I'm not saying that qualifying someone as "high time preference" indicates a racial prejudice. That isn't what I meant; but the fact remains that many of these regions that economists might be compelled to describe as consisting of mostly high time preference individuals are mostly inner-city, urban area populated primarily by blacks.

That's the historical (read: contingent) circumstance, and that is what cannot be reduced to whether or not the individuals living there are high time preference or not. It has nothing to do with how broadly applicable the label is; it has to do with how you're using "high time preference" to explain the contemporary conditions of a given region and its people.

 

[Dak]

Look Dak, I'm not saying that qualifying someone as "high time preference" indicates a racial prejudice. That isn't what I meant; but the fact remains that many of these regions that economists might be compelled to describe as consisting of mostly high time preference individuals are mostly inner-city, urban area populated primarily by blacks.

That's the historical (read: contingent) circumstance, and that is what cannot be reduced to whether or not the individuals living there are high time preference or not. It has nothing to do with how broadly applicable the label is; it has to do with how you're using "high time preference" to explain the contemporary conditions of a given region and its people.

And many of those regions are inhabited by rural and/or urban whites or hispanics. I've been in downtown LA, I've been in the boonies of flyover country. I've spent most of my life either in the rural or innercity areas of the "Black Belt". Generally speaking, the only way to have a reasonably good guess as to whether the HTP area you are in is black or white (if you had no prior knowledge and saw no people) is the ratio of shit cars with "rims" to shit cars without rims (edit: and whether the shit cars were most import economy cars vs old "luxury" autos). Hispanics have a lot more cultural flair that give them away.

Edit: TBC -I disagree with that "mostly blacks" distinction.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm certain there are whites in some of those areas; but the large majority of inhabitants in the poorest sections of the country are black. This isn't to say there aren't poor white people; it's to say that an overwhelming percentage of blacks are impoverished and inhabiting those areas.

 

[Dak]

I'm certain there are whites in some of those areas; but the large majority of inhabitants in the poorest sections of the country are black. This isn't to say there aren't poor white people; it's to say that an overwhelming percentage of blacks are impoverished and inhabiting those areas.

Ok, to additionally be clear - being poor doesn't mean one is HTP necessarily.

I'll be willing to grant that it's probably reasonable to assume that the ratio of HTP blacks to LTP blacks is probably greater than the ratio of HTP whites to LTP whites. But given that blacks are a minority (for now), you can't assume mostly. A hell of a lot of the country is populated by HTP whites and hispanics. Blacks are just more obvious because they tend to condense in "visible" areas.

 

[Einherjar86]

A larger percentage of blacks fall under the poverty line than percentage of whites. This is symptomatic of our scholarly differences, but I don't see how using HTP is useful in this context. I see how you're using it and how it applies (I think), but I don't think it can explain everything you want it to.

 

[Dak]

Well it doesn't explain anything historically, only individually and immediately. That is, time preference doesn't explain itself, and it is only demonstrable. One demonstrates a high or low (or medium?) time preference. We cannot, from that demonstration, tell why one has such a time preference.

My point is that racism does not explain time preference, but time preference does explain individual behaviors. If only blacks in America had HTP, or were the overwhelming group displaying HTP, then we might could pinpoint racism and/or slavery as a cause for such. But this isn't the case. The difference in ratios might point towards slavery as a factor, but not racism as a factor (if that makes sense).

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]