Black unemployment: Highest in 27 years

haymarket said:

Yes it does. It says very loudly that you do not know what you are talking about and its all double talk and has less utilitarian value than a bag of manure.

But then , what else is new?

Click to expand...

What the research show is that there is an increase in income tied to a person's education. When the analysis controls for IQ the return to education drops. This strongly suggests that employers are rewarding people with higher pay, not for their education credential or the specific skills which they may have learned via education, but instead for their general thinking ability.

drz-400 said:

While you could say that SOME stereotypes are accurate on the average, and some are more accurate than others, you also have to take into account that with these broad generalities there is a high degree of variability.

Click to expand...

What the research shows is that most people do, in fact, think this way. The people who believe stereotypes apply in all instances are exceedingly rare.

Lets say for arguements sake, and this is pure speculation, that the reason for the stereotype of most blacks being lazy is really because most of them really are lazy, and this means that they SHOULD have more people unemployed, this is unacceptable to me because this stereotype while accurate of the group would lack any sort of precision if you applied it to an individual.

Click to expand...

This is true as well but it's impractical to implement. If a woman is walking alone on a dark path at night and she sees a little girl running towards her she will react differently than if she sees a single elderly woman walking towards her and yet again she will react differently than if she sees a big, strong young man walking towards her. She will judge the threat level of each individual based on stereotypes - the man, who she doesn't know but is judging, is deemed to be the greatest risk to her. You would have her treat the little girl, the elderly woman, and the big strong man as equal threats. That's not practical. When she makes her judgment she is judging the man based on stereotype not on his own individuality. She can't afford the time to gather the information that she needs on this individual man in order to judge him accurately. She bases her decision on the best information that she has available to her.

This is exactly what most people do when the make decisions - the use the best information available to them. When they do not have information on the individual, then they rely on stereotypes. However, when they do have information on the individual, research clearly demonstrates that people abandon the stereotype and rely on the specific information, all else being equal. For instance, if there exists a stereotype that men are awful cooks and someone has enjoyed a meal prepared by a man, they'll disregard the stereotype and judge the man based on his cooking ability.

One black person could be living as a bum on the street on food stamps while one could be president of the country. Its really a case of accuracy vs. precision.

Click to expand...

Again, people are not clowns. They do have reasoning ability. They judge all sorts of complementary information as they weigh the value of a stereotype.

RiverDad said:

What the research shows is that most people do, in fact, think this way. The people who believe stereotypes apply in all instances are exceedingly rare.

Click to expand...

Great, and getting to your next point, I agree, I think it is really a question of when they are used. Stereotypes will be used more often when there is little other information about the person, so we must infer something about them.

This is true as well but it's impractical to implement. If a woman is walking alone on a dark path at night and she sees a little girl running towards her she will react differently than if she sees a single elderly woman walking towards her and yet again she will react differently than if she sees a big, strong young man walking towards her. She will judge the threat level of each individual based on stereotypes - the man, who she doesn't know but is judging, is deemed to be the greatest risk to her. You would have her treat the little girl, the elderly woman, and the big strong man as equal threats. That's not practical. When she makes her judgment she is judging the man based on stereotype not on his own individuality. She can't afford the time to gather the information that she needs on this individual man in order to judge him accurately. She bases her decision on the best information that she has available to her.

This is exactly what most people do when the make decisions - the use the best information available to them. When they do not have information on the individual, then they rely on stereotypes. However, when they do have information on the individual, research clearly demonstrates that people abandon the stereotype and rely on the specific information, all else being equal. For instance, if there exists a stereotype that men are awful cooks and someone has enjoyed a meal prepared by a man, they'll disregard the stereotype and judge the man based on his cooking ability.

Click to expand...

Agreed, problem is that when you are applying for a job there will be little information about you. You have an application or an interview. Its easy to see why someone might have to resort to stereotypes to draw a necessary conclusion. Thus, this brings us to my point, negative stereotypes are hurting the black population in the labor market. Why? Because the stereotype may be accurate or valid for the group, but it is not a precise or reliable way to gain information about individuals. This goes back to stillballin's controversial claim of "institutional racism". This is how it happens.

Again, people are not clowns. They do have reasoning ability. They judge all sorts of complementary information as they weigh the value of a stereotype.

Click to expand...

True, I am just making sure my point is clear. Accurate is not precise. The stereotype can be valid, but not reliable.

ric27 said:

Hmmmm....Our public education system aka "government schools" is nothing more than a shifty pyramid scheme bent on Marxist socialization.

The only tangible things that are accomplished in K-12 today is teaching kids how to vote for democrats and fornicate with one another. I guess in some places they still teach kids how to play sports, but to my mind that's not remotely enough to redeem the evils of the system.

Double talk and malarkey??

Click to expand...

That must explain why we have the highest standard of living in the world.

drz-400 said:

Agreed, problem is that when you are applying for a job there will be little information about you. You have an application or an interview. Its easy to see why someone might have to resort to stereotypes to draw a necessary conclusion. Thus, this brings us to my point, negative stereotypes are hurting the black population in the labor market. Why? Because the stereotype may be accurate or valid for the group, but it is not a precise or reliable way to gain information about individuals. This goes back to stillballin's controversial claim of "institutional racism". This is how it happens.

Click to expand...

And this is the heart of the problem. How do we find a balance between two competing interests and two competing values. The job applicant wants to be judged as an individual and not held to account for the stereotype attached to his group. The employer wants to make the best, and most accurate, decision he can. When an employer takes on a new employee the act of hiring and bringing the new employee up to speed represents a considerable investment on the part of the firm and if that employee doesn't work out then that investment is flushed down the drain. The employer seeks out as much information as he can possibly collect in order to minimize the risk to his bottom line - employers who make good hiring decisions will save money compared to firms which make bad hiring decisions.

Your position, I take it, is that employers should disregard stereotypes completely and judge the job applicant solely on the information they have available to them that is restricted to just that individual. The problem is that stereotypes are really just probabilities and when you work with a large enough sample set, and the probabilities favor one outcome, you're going to improve your performance metric by relying on the probability calculation. If stereotypes were inaccurate most of the time, then relying on them would actually produce worse outcomes for the employer, or for anyone for that matter.

So, an employer who adopts your preferred method and rejects relying on stereotypes will be competing against employers who judiciously use stereotypes and if the stereotypes are accurate, then the employer who rejects using them is going to be making more costly hiring mistakes than the employer who uses them. This does not create an incentive for employers to reject information carried by stereotypes.

The solution here is simple to conceive but very difficult to implement and that solution is that the basis for the stereotype needs to be invalidated. That solution needs to be implemented in the community that is affected by the stereotype.

RiverDad said:

Inequality and ability

In fact, the variance of the unobserved sector-specific skill now decreases in both the professional and service sectors, while increasing very slightly in the blue-collar sector. The addition of IQ into the analysis reduces the returns to education, particularly for 1992, so that there is virtually no appreciable increase in the return to education in either sector after controlling for IQ. The increasing return to education found in Table 6 is now picked up by the increasing return to IQ in the professional and service sectors​

What the research show is that there is an increase in income tied to a person's education. When the analysis controls for IQ the return to education drops. This strongly suggests that employers are rewarding people with higher pay, not for their education credential or the specific skills which they may have learned via education, but instead for their general thinking ability.

Click to expand...

The paper you linked to is a prime example of BS wrapped up nice and neat in a fine sheen of gobbledygook and meaningless jargon which says nothing of any substance. I can see why it appealed to you.

here is a sample of the wisdom contained in it

For any given year, each individual chooses their sector by utility
maximization where the utility of individual i in sector j is represented as follows:
Uij
¼ bj Z
i
þ W
ij
þ v
ij
where Zi is a Lz
1 vector of observable, exogenous variables for person i in all three
sectors, bj is a 1
Lz utility parameter vector on the exogenous variables in sector j, Wij is
the log wage of person i in sector j, vij is an independent (across individuals, sectors, years)
and identically normally distributed stochastic component of utility for person i in sector j,
with a mean of zero and a variance equal to rv
j
2
.
The log wage for individual i in sector j is modeled by the following:
Wij
¼ d
j Xj
þ r
j fi
þ u
ij
where Xi is a Lx
1 vector of observable, exogenous variables for person i that enters all
three sectors, dj is a 1
Lx vector of parameters on the exogenous variables, fi is a scalar
random factor distributed with a three-point discrete distribution between zero and one
(the variance of fi is represented byrf2), rj is a scalar sector-specific factor loading, uij is an
independent (across individuals, sectors, years, and from fi and vij) and identically
normally distributed stochastic component of utility in sector j for person i, with a mean
of zero and a variance equal to r
2
.

Click to expand...

What more needs to be said that the author has already pontificated upon?

haymarket said:

The paper you linked to is a prime example of BS wrapped up nice and neat in a fine sheen of gobbledygook and meaningless jargon which says nothing of any substance. I can see why it appealed to you.

Click to expand...

I see that your Masters in Education is paying nice dividends.

What the paper is revealing is that wages reflect skill levels and skill levels have more to do with intelligence than with specific knowledge that one learned in one's English class. Problem solving abilities, sophistication of analysis, seeing opportunities, exploiting opportunities, taking direction well, etc are more related to intelligence than anything one learned in her "Gender and Oppression" class in the Wymyn's Studies department.

SE102 said:

Yes, I hear do-rags affect work ethic...

Click to expand...

No doubt they wear them regularly up in Fairfax, don't they? Whether they affect work ethic is irrelevant, whether you survive the interview wearing one is.

RiverDad said:

I see that your Masters in Education is paying nice dividends.

What the paper is revealing is that wages reflect skill levels and skill levels have more to do with intelligence than with specific knowledge that one learned in one's English class. Problem solving abilities, sophistication of analysis, seeing opportunities, exploiting opportunities, taking direction well, etc are more related to intelligence than anything one learned in her "Gender and Oppression" class in the Wymyn's Studies department.

Click to expand...

No that is just a value judgment and an opinion based on your own priorities and your own belief system.

Thank for your concern about my well being. I am doing very well. One thing I learned in life is that when you hear or see something that sounds like just so much BS - say so. There are people who specialize in double talk and learning how to say absolutely nothing in the biggest words and most complicated jargon ever invented. Outside of rather technical math or science, if you cannot explain it so that an average person can comprehend it, it probably is a bunch of crap.

RiverDad said:

And this is the heart of the problem. How do we find a balance between two competing interests and two competing values. The job applicant wants to be judged as an individual and not held to account for the stereotype attached to his group. The employer wants to make the best, and most accurate, decision he can. When an employer takes on a new employee the act of hiring and bringing the new employee up to speed represents a considerable investment on the part of the firm and if that employee doesn't work out then that investment is flushed down the drain. The employer seeks out as much information as he can possibly collect in order to minimize the risk to his bottom line - employers who make good hiring decisions will save money compared to firms which make bad hiring decisions.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Your position, I take it, is that employers should disregard stereotypes completely and judge the job applicant solely on the information they have available to them that is restricted to just that individual. The problem is that stereotypes are really just probabilities and when you work with a large enough sample set, and the probabilities favor one outcome, you're going to improve your performance metric by relying on the probability calculation. If stereotypes were inaccurate most of the time, then relying on them would actually produce worse outcomes for the employer, or for anyone for that matter.

So, an employer who adopts your preferred method and rejects relying on stereotypes will be competing against employers who judiciously use stereotypes and if the stereotypes are accurate, then the employer who rejects using them is going to be making more costly hiring mistakes than the employer who uses them. This does not create an incentive for employers to reject information carried by stereotypes.

The solution here is simple to conceive but very difficult to implement and that solution is that the basis for the stereotype needs to be invalidated. That solution needs to be implemented in the community that is affected by the stereotype.

Click to expand...

No, I don't necessarily think that an employer hiring based on stereotypes is wrong. I mean, if you don't know enough about a person to determine whether or not you should hire them and a certain negative stereotype has a higher chance of being true than not, I would say don't hire them. However, when these sort of decisions take place in a large scale setting you end up with a system that basically puts one group at a disadvantage to another. Many people would regard this as not being fair. Realistically, how much can you really do about it? I am not saying that employers should disregard all stereotypes, that would not make any sense. They should hire based on the best information they have, as you said. It is more of a societal problem than one that can be solved by looking at individual employers. It is because of these problems that we have things like equal opportunity employment, and affirmative action in the US and many other countries. Do these things remedy the problem? Obviously not. Do they create some new problems? Yes. But the reason why we have them is because the way our institutions work to place people of different race and ethnicity at a disadvantage over others.

haymarket said:

That must explain why we have the highest standard of living in the world.

Click to expand...

Stasis is unnatural. It doesn't occur in nature and nature hates it. When you sigh with satisfaction that you've finally gotten to where you want, watch out. Inevitably, it will change. And changes are usually cyclical. Good, bad, good, bad. Even if you are growing with an upward slope, it won't be a straight line. It will look more like a sinusoidal wave.

WWII caused a huge freaking boom. There was full employment everywhere. You might even say there was over-employment because of the infusion of women into the civilian workforce. But when the war ended, we had a recession. Soldiers back in the work force, women getting forced out of their jobs, retraction in industry since they weren't producing war materials any longer. In part to keep the economy going, there was a real push to a consumer economy. It increased employment and people felt they deserved to splurge on themselves after 15 years of depression and war. Plus the universal desire that you want your kid's life to be better than your own. That brings us to the 60's generation. Their parents had to scrimp, struggle and save. They built a work ethic. They were then able to provide an unprecedented living standard to their kids. Who didn't need to struggle. Who had things handed to them on silver platters (compared to the previous generation). If the hippies had to work for their food, etc, then the 60's revolution might not have occurred. They had the luxury to despise the work ethic and their parent's lifestyles because they were still sucking on society's tit.

drz-400 said:

No, I don't necessarily think that an employer hiring based on stereotypes is wrong. I mean, if you don't know enough about a person to determine whether or not you should hire them and a certain negative stereotype has a higher chance of being true than not, I would say don't hire them.

Click to expand...

Right. No one is setting out to punish anyone or any group. It's not white privilege or institutional racism or structural racism, which imply processes which are unjust. This practice is just like age-based auto insurance practices. An auto insurer doesn't know that a 17 year old male is going to cause accidents, they just know that as a group 17 year old males cause a lot of auto accidents. They're not setting out to purposely harm 17 year old male drivers.

However, when these sort of decisions take place in a large scale setting you end up with a system that basically puts one group at a disadvantage to another. Many people would regard this as not being fair.

Click to expand...

What is the solution to high insurance premiums for 17 year old male drivers? The obvious solution is for 17 year old male drivers to drive more responsibly and have the same accident rate as 45 year old women. Once that group of young male drivers behaves as we see 45 year old female drivers behaving on the road, then the outcomes in terms of insurance premiums charged will be equalized for the two groups.

These stereotypes arise from reality. They can also be changed by changing reality.

Realistically, how much can you really do about it? I am not saying that employers should disregard all stereotypes, that would not make any sense. They should hire based on the best information they have, as you said.

Click to expand...

The solution is there - increase the value of the individual information. If the group stereotype is laziness, then arrive at the job interview with personal recommendations from previous employers which sing your praises regarding your astounding work ethic. And so on. This is now specific information that is more useful than the general information conveyed via group stereotype.

White unemployment: Highest in 27 years....

:eyeroll:

haymarket said:

That must explain why we have the highest standard of living in the world.

Click to expand...

That was before the government started regulating us to death.

apdst said:

That was before the government started regulating us to death.

Click to expand...

Who has died from government regulation?

haymarket said:

Who has died from government regulation?

Click to expand...

6 Million Jews

drz-400 said:

True, and even more to a degree in popular culture. Look on MTV with the rap videos, in your everyday comedy movies when they crack a joke about black people, ... Also,you just have these things ingrained into our culture. Where I live there are a lot of Mexican/Hispanic people, particularly in Greeley. There are so many negative stereotypes flowing out of that area, and they are probably only true less than 5% of the time. If a **** load of stuff gets stolen from a construction site around here the first thing out of someones mouth is "It was probably a Mexican." Right or wrong these things will negatively effect other minorities ability to get a job.

Click to expand...

Stereotypes don't create themselves.

StillBallin75 said:

I don't believe that. There's more blacks in college than in jail.

Click to expand...

The number of black people in college is irrelevant to the employment stats of the black community.

digsbe said:

My take on the issue is that it's neither Obama's or the black communities fault. The sad reality is that many African Americans work lower income jobs. due to the recession these jobs have been cut and many have lost their source of income. It's not "Obama hurting the black community" or "blacks are lazy and won't work." (which is an incredibly racist opinion).

Click to expand...

Alot of black people find their living in the oilfield, here in Louisiana. I would say without a doubt, that the drilling moratorium played a part in black unemployment figures.

haymarket said:

the implication from your criticism being obvious - that there simply are no black surgeons, no black chief os staffs of surgical units, no black police chiefs who are wise, no black learned judges, no black brilliant defense lawyers, etc.

Do ever tire of this garbage?

And that is not a serious question.

Click to expand...

You have a masters in education? Really?

TurtleDude said:

6 Million Jews

Click to expand...

Don't forget the Indians.

Jim Crow laws were government regulation, yes?

apdst said:

You have a masters in education? Really?

Click to expand...

Yeah.... incredible. I find myself misty-eyed and lost for words.

Masters in Education...lol

ric27 said:

Yeah.... incredible. I find myself misty-eyed and lost for words.

Click to expand...

Is it a wonder why the public school system is ****ed up?

RiverDad said:

I think that your comment is quite interesting. It would be good if we could develop the skills that you mention but the problem is that schools don't know how to teach independent thinking and critical thinking. Secondly, when we analyze how critical thinking actually operates we find that much of it is based on analytic reasoning where "fact" are compared and differences spotted. For this to occur one needs a solid base of knowledge, you know, those memorized facts. Here's an example - memorize your times tables. Once you've got them committed to memory then you are equipped to detect patterns and tricks which allow you to extend your knowledge beyond what you've memorized. If you know your #10 times table then you'll have no problem with the #100 times table and the #1,000 times table. If you don't know your #10 times table, then you're going to stumble around trying to do multiplication calculations based on 100 and 1,000.

Click to expand...

All I'm saying is that what is the use of memorizing facts if thats all one can do?

Mr. Invisible said:

All I'm saying is that what is the use of memorizing facts if thats all one can do?

Click to expand...

-We all have to crawl before we can walk and walk before we can run.
-Knowing facts is a pretty good end on its own terms.
-With a storehouse of facts a person is equipped to begin to see patterns. This is the point where critical thinking can begin.

The problem is that we don't know how to effectively teach critical thinking, so basing educational pedagogies on the presumption that that is the alternative road available to us is just wishful thinking.