Boring sociology shit
This post is probably TL:DR for Tumblr but here goes:
What role does culture play in explaining socio-economic differences between races (in the US)?
Probably, the most pressing and heated questions that sociology deals with is with race. Sociology, a liberal field, often avoids the topic of culture to explain socio-economic race/class differences. They argue that white/asian success is dependent upon factors like household income and strucutral forms of discrimination, rather than purporting that one culture is superior or inferior to another.
Sociology’s liberal nature is exemplified through ethnic studies. Let’s examine the Asian-American model of culture:
Asian-Americans faced extreme forms of discrimination and exclusion up until the 1965 immigration act. They still face discrimination today, especially in the media. How did the White scholars respond to their incredible success? They called it “Cultural Compatibility”. The scholars believed that something about Asian culture is somehow compatible with American upward mobility, while Black culture is not. Conservatives used this as fuel to exonerate themselves of any blame for the failure Black’s to reach these same levels of upward mobility as Asians. Yet, the liberal view held by many ethnic studies scholars is that of cultural relativism: no culture is inherently superior to another. In my Asian-American studies class, I also learned that another reason for Asian upward mobility is that most Asians who immigrate to the US come relatively wealthy (take the term “relatively” lightly, as these immigrants are by no means rich and their accomplishments should still be praised). The same rates of upward mobility of non-voluntary immigrants, such as southeast asian refugees is generally much lower than East Asians.
In short, conservatives employed the term “culture” as a tool to justify structural forms of racism.
Sociologist Orlando Patterson argues in his article “Taking Culture Seriously”, that scholars must take culture seriously and that culture is a crucial part of understanding the inequality that exists today. Patterson claims that the single greatest problem that African Americans face today is the 60% abandonment rate of Black children. Patterson traces this phenomenon back to the legacy of slavery. Slave men did not have control of property. They were never recognized as fathers. Slave men were encouraged to have lots of children to provide even more free labor. This created a pattern of early marriage and high fertility and established the culture of large poor Black families. They did not have to take into account resources before having children: land and other shit was provided by the slave owners. Additionally, Patterson claims that this culture was part of a greater need for “masculine compensation” for poor Black males. They had no opportunity to prove their worth to the rest of the world.
Much poorer people in the US and around the world simply do not have the same rates of child abondonment as blacks.
A very important point in the article: “The fact that 60% of Afro-American children are fatherless does not mean that anything near this percentage of Afro-American fathers have abandoned their children. The great majority of Afro-American fathers behave responsibly toward their children…”
I’ll touch on another article that explains the role of culture in the Asian-American context. Why are Asians so good at math? I don’t even know who wrote the article, unfortunately, but it’s from a book called “Outliers” and the chapter is called “Rice Paddies and Math Tests”. The author argues that the East Asian legacy of rice paddie farming is directly related to Asian’s success at math. He says that rice paddie farming is incredibly work intensive, is too complex to be controlled by a overlord, and requires skills akin to running a small business. This has lead to proverbs like, “No food without blood and sweat”, “In winter, the lazy man freezes to death”, “If a man works hard, the land will not be lazy”. This cultural legacy of belief in hard work may be an important contributing factor of why Asians succeed today despite centuries of discrimination.
Conclusion
I do not believe that cultural explanations are everything, and I am still a bigger believer in structural reasons for inequality. Slavery and rice paddie farming happened many generations ago. There are clear, measurable forms of racism that exist today, like job discrimination statistics and other shit that i dont care to go into this time. Anyway, these articles really opened my mind up to the role of culture that i previously underestimated.
TL:DR version: culture matters and explains why azns are successful today and blacks are not. But it’s not the only thing that matters. Racism is real.
I got more interesting shit next time. Sociology of Jerkin, Sociology or marijuana, sociology of everything.
