Philosophical Vegan Forum

I didn't see this. It's interesting, not surprising. There are a lot of cultural influences to education (like attitude, etc.)

Black kids can face a lot of negative peer pressure for being book smart, getting good grades, doing homework, etc.

I'd love to hear @Lay Vegan's thought on it. (Sorry to call you out for being a smart black guy )

The article/research seems to make a pretty fundamental mistake, namely, its using income to define social class when income is just one component.

For example, think of a family where the father is a surgeon and mother a congress-women. Say their net-worth is $5 million. Now take a family that just won the lottery, their net-worth is $5 million. While these families have similar net-worth they are likely to be very socially distinct and it shouldn't be surprising if the children of the first family do better than the second. This is an extreme case to note a distinction but the more common case has similar issues. If your upbringing is working-class and if you manage to gain a middle-class income in your 30's the social and cultural aspects of your working-class background don't just vanish. Just like when you grow up with immigrant parents their culture ends up as part of your identity.

So it shouldn't be surprising that income doesn't explain everything.

Interesting read. I wish I were more surprised.

On a side note, it would be nice to see a comparison of the kinds of occupations black and white men pursue. I assume that black and white men across all income brackets do not end up working in the same the jobs?

And given the rather gruesome stats on African American representation with STEM degrees, the results are unsurprising.

African Americans represent 8.8% of STEM bachelor's degree recipients, compared with 51% for whites. And earned just 2.5% of all STEM doctorate degrees granted in 2005, compared with 43% for whites. 61.3% of Ph.D.s awarded to whites were in STEM fields, compared with only 45% for African Americans http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2008/ ... ng-numbers


I think there are an amalgam of different factors at play; social upbringing, family dynamics, racist biases, cultural aspirations etc. all of which impede black men from performing well in school or pursuing high-income jobs.


I've had a fortunate upbringing, so I don't have anything meaningful to offer from personal experience. Especially being that I was given high expectations to do well in school, participate in extra-cirriculers, and go into a high-paying profession etc.


@carnap Agreed there. I think people assume that all families within similar income brackets (regardless of cultural upbringing) must have the same family dynamics and cultural characteristics. I don’t think they necessarily would.