He writes, "To a typical white student, studying hard does not offer an escape route from the society that surrounds him. His parents, extended family, and peers are holding down the kinds of jobs that come from an education."
Hmmm. It's true that my father was a high school principal. My mother, though, finished only Grade 11 and worked part time in clerical jobs and taught piano. My brother dropped out of Grade 11. To some extent, I did see studying hard as an escape route.
Hartford might then respond that I'm not typical. Could be. I'm not sure.
Asian American high school students in the US study twice as much per day as white students. White students study twice as much per day as black students (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ fig 1). Acting white may discourage black student homework. A more likely explanation is that black students have been misled about their returns to skill acquisition and behave accordingly. Asians are told that education will pay off, blacks are told that it won’t.
Theodore Dalrymple describes a similar pattern among lower-class British whites:
“ To call someone clever has never been an unequivocal compliment in England, but it takes a special kind of perversity for students at the high school situated 400 yards from my hospital to say to one of their colleagues, who took an overdose because of the constant bullying to which she was subject: You're stupid because you're clever.”
“What did they mean by this apparent paradox? They meant that anyone who tried hard at school and performed well was wasting his time, when he could have been engaged in the real business of life, such as truanting in the park or wandering downtown. Furthermore, there was menace in their words: If you don't mend your ways and join us, they were saying, we'll beat you up. This was no idle threat: I often meet people in their twenties and thirties in my hospital practice who gave up at school under such duress and subsequently realize that they have missed an opportunity which, had it been taken, would have changed the whole course of their lives much for the better. And those who attend the few schools in the city which maintain very high academic standards risk a beating if they venture to where the poor white stupids live. In the last year, I have treated two boys in the emergency room after such a beating, and two others who have taken overdoses for fear of receiving one at the hands of their neighbors.”
Respectfully, Jewish culture has more than two millennia of experience assimilating with majority economic systems while retaining distinct social identity. My grandparents arrived in the US impoverished but rich in cultural traditions and myths useful to economic success as an “out” group member. Sure Jews value education. But you don’t think Black people value education just as much? Show me another American minority that taught itself to read despite being legally or practically barred from learning l until the twentieth century.
There’s an interesting chapter about this distinction in Hirschman’s *Exit, Voice, and Loyalty*. His example of a collective exit strategy is the indigenous people of Bolivia; he obliquely describes the stigma a member of the community would receive for wearing business attire (specifically a tie).
Groups that believe they have a chance to escape are more likely to try to escape together. In order for a group to want to plan a collective escape, you have to raise its perceived chances of success. Seems perfectly rational to me.
Sure, game theory can explain why one equilibrium is stable, but it cannot explain why this equilibrium rather than another emerged. Because those equilibria emerge from interacting tensions across time, individual versus collective, reality versus ideals, resilience versus efficiency, exploration versus security. Those tensions continually reshape the game itself.
>Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were part of the working class when they arrived.
And large numbers of them were socialist or communist. There are still substantial numbers of working class Jews (often the products of intermarriage so not technically Jews according to religious standards).
He writes, "To a typical white student, studying hard does not offer an escape route from the society that surrounds him. His parents, extended family, and peers are holding down the kinds of jobs that come from an education."
Hmmm. It's true that my father was a high school principal. My mother, though, finished only Grade 11 and worked part time in clerical jobs and taught piano. My brother dropped out of Grade 11. To some extent, I did see studying hard as an escape route.
Hartford might then respond that I'm not typical. Could be. I'm not sure.
Asian American high school students in the US study twice as much per day as white students. White students study twice as much per day as black students (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ fig 1). Acting white may discourage black student homework. A more likely explanation is that black students have been misled about their returns to skill acquisition and behave accordingly. Asians are told that education will pay off, blacks are told that it won’t.
Theodore Dalrymple describes a similar pattern among lower-class British whites:
“ To call someone clever has never been an unequivocal compliment in England, but it takes a special kind of perversity for students at the high school situated 400 yards from my hospital to say to one of their colleagues, who took an overdose because of the constant bullying to which she was subject: You're stupid because you're clever.”
“What did they mean by this apparent paradox? They meant that anyone who tried hard at school and performed well was wasting his time, when he could have been engaged in the real business of life, such as truanting in the park or wandering downtown. Furthermore, there was menace in their words: If you don't mend your ways and join us, they were saying, we'll beat you up. This was no idle threat: I often meet people in their twenties and thirties in my hospital practice who gave up at school under such duress and subsequently realize that they have missed an opportunity which, had it been taken, would have changed the whole course of their lives much for the better. And those who attend the few schools in the city which maintain very high academic standards risk a beating if they venture to where the poor white stupids live. In the last year, I have treated two boys in the emergency room after such a beating, and two others who have taken overdoses for fear of receiving one at the hands of their neighbors.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/we-dont-want-no-education
Excellent post.
Respectfully, Jewish culture has more than two millennia of experience assimilating with majority economic systems while retaining distinct social identity. My grandparents arrived in the US impoverished but rich in cultural traditions and myths useful to economic success as an “out” group member. Sure Jews value education. But you don’t think Black people value education just as much? Show me another American minority that taught itself to read despite being legally or practically barred from learning l until the twentieth century.
There’s an interesting chapter about this distinction in Hirschman’s *Exit, Voice, and Loyalty*. His example of a collective exit strategy is the indigenous people of Bolivia; he obliquely describes the stigma a member of the community would receive for wearing business attire (specifically a tie).
Groups that believe they have a chance to escape are more likely to try to escape together. In order for a group to want to plan a collective escape, you have to raise its perceived chances of success. Seems perfectly rational to me.
Sure, game theory can explain why one equilibrium is stable, but it cannot explain why this equilibrium rather than another emerged. Because those equilibria emerge from interacting tensions across time, individual versus collective, reality versus ideals, resilience versus efficiency, exploration versus security. Those tensions continually reshape the game itself.
>Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were part of the working class when they arrived.
And large numbers of them were socialist or communist. There are still substantial numbers of working class Jews (often the products of intermarriage so not technically Jews according to religious standards).