Probably everyone has seen this New York Times piece on a massive study comparing intergenerational outcomes for different races and genders in America, but I thought it would be useful to have a larger thread about it since its conclusions are so far-reaching and sometimes controversial on all sides.

Here's the Times piece:
Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys

And here's the study itself:
Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective

Some of their conclusions:
This is the finding the NYT focuses on, although its maybe the least controversial among people who are reasonably knowledgeable about race in America. It basically replicates Patrick Sharkey's work on racial mobility on a much larger scale.

The study is pretty dismissive of racial discrimination claims against black women, which its come under a bit of fire for from the left. This twitter thread explains the objection better than I could.

Some other conclusions of note:

Did they control for walking in the street?

Lower local poverty rates, greater paternal influence and lower racial bias results in better outcomes for blacks - breaking news.

The disparity between black men and women in terms of their likelihood of dropping off into lower income brackets is i think the most interesting thing.

I think a possible explanation is that, rather than racism negatively impacting the men disproportionately, that having an elitest attitude is a major motivator for men (especially men from affluent backgrounds) to "reach for greatness" as a means of acquiring 'the best' females, much more so than for women who (ime) tend to be more internally motivated.

I haven't looked at the study in detail but I would expect mass incarceration to play a large role in the differences in outcome between black men and women.

Yeah, that was my hunch as well. Busted for weed as a rich young black dude? Done-zo.

Not sure that affects enough of a percentage of blacks in that wealth bracket to be responsible for that kind of a discrepancy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.3118076d7941

The incarceration gap by different measures of "wealthy families" as per the original article is about 6%. A bit more if you define it as the top quartile, and almost no difference when looking at the top decile (with an unexpected reversal where whites in the top decile are actually more likely to be incarcerated).

The scale of the discrepancy observed in the first article is way bigger than that. 22% fewer are staying in the rich category. 10% more are ending up in the poor or lower income brackets. The gap in incarceration is likely at least in part a symptom of what they're doing with their time if they're not slaving away towards a dull career. And none of this phenomena, of which only a small fraction could be attributable to unfair sentencing for things like marijuana possession, is seen in females.

There is a rough consensus in the literature that the primary cause is, for whatever reason, black wealth and education don't translate as well to education for later generations.

The why of that is however not clear. And no, drugs and inheritance aren't it. Both have been suggested and tested and they have minor roles at most.

There is something, dare I say, cultural going on. Read that how you will. We have to be incredibly careful about attributing any differences to differences in law enforcement especially in cases when the discrepancy is so big. You're implicitly suggesting a large percentage of well-off black children are doing illegal drugs.

Make a more nuanced accusation like even given the same opportunities, Black Americans have to fight against passive racism (aka confirmation bias and stereotypes) and that makes it harder for them to succeed in college. I'd be okay with that although I think there is a lot more going on.

There isnt enough detail to attribute causes. One thing I dont like about the study is the use of the mathematical mean instead of the median on a distribution (income) thats not Gaussian. The discrepancy between men and women can be possibly attributed to that but you really have to look at the whole sample distribution.

I think a fog of micro-obstacles is a a big part of the reason wealthy black males are more downwardly mobile while women hold onto their status.

There are so many subtle social hindrances that slow networking, keep males out of the conversation, because so many whites are uncomfortable around African American men. If, at a graduate seminar, everybody agrees with everything you say because you are black, you are not getting a very edifying interaction. Endless variants, all adding up to never being in with the in crowd in career development.