JustOneMinute: Portable Property

Portable Property

Looks like I picked a bad day to give up double espressos - Andrew Sullivan and the always-iteresting Ann Althouse have me utterly baffled.

Mr. Sullivan links to a George Borjas posting about an economics study, the abstract of which tells us that blacks and Hispanics spend more on bling than "comparable" whites, whatever that means - were the ancestors of these white folks brought over as slaves and subjected to something like the Jim Crow laws until the 1960's?

Prof. Althouse denounces the whole enterprise as looking "like racism -- really old-fashioned racism" and adds this in her comments:

I just don't think it is very appropriate to point to a study that appears to confirm very old and offensive racial stereotypes and to say almost nothing but put up some jokey video clip. I really don't care about the British subgroup represented here or what black stereotypes they like to imitate. He's [Sullivan] put up a post that seems gleeful about what has long been an offensive stereotype.

Well. Kerwin Charles, one of the authors of this hateful study, is himself black, so maybe it is not quite so hateful.

For myself, I thought that a point of emphasizing racial diversity in, for example, college recruiting was to celebrate cultural differences. Is that a sham, or do we expect that there are in fact some cultural (NOTE - I'm not saying genetic!) differences amongst races?

And if there really are cultural differences, do we really expect each and every one of them to reflect well on each race as viewed through the eyes of another? Or might there be moments when a cultural difference to which one group might object can be documented?

And a final rhetorical question - what does Prof. Althouse have against bling? Maybe white folk are under-spending on conspicuous consumption, or spending on different types of conspicuous consumption, or spending on something inconspicuous but otherwise detrimental to their well-being. Is there some objective measure by which she has been able to determine that "comparable" whites were spending an amount on bling that was closer to optimum, or is she simply projecting her own cultural pre-dospositions onto this data? (Hmm, was that one question?)

Baffling.

MORE: Her commenters draw a distinction between "racist" and racialist", which seems right. OK, it seems obvious.

Posted by Tom Maguire on September 16, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Well I don't buy "bling." I count myself lucky everyday that my Mother, Grandmother and Greatgrandmoter all loved diamonds, emeralds and pearls. There is something to be said for being the only girl of an only girl of an only girl - you get to inherit all the goodie girl stuff.

Posted by: Sara | September 16, 2007 at 04:46 PM

'Twas I who posted about the (obvious, I thought) need to differentiate between "racism and "racialism". Documenting differences between/among races is not racism.

As anyone reading the commenters can see, it's a lost cause.

But I refrained from mentioning Veblein's "conspicous consumption" theory. Black people buy "bling" in order to impress their peers; whites buy homes (?) to impress theirs.

One man can do only so much.

SMG

Posted by: SteveMG | September 16, 2007 at 04:58 PM

SteveMG - when I was maybe 9 or 10, I asked an adult, "why do all the "colored" people (I know really dating myself) drive expensive Cadillacs." I was told it was because they weren't allowed to spend their money on nice homes because they had to stay in the bad parts of town.

I've thought about that from time to time. When I got old enough to understand what racism is, I thought that statement was racist, until I learned that it was describing a truism, at least in my hometown, were redlining mortgages was prevalent. Oft times it seems we call the description of a problem racist, instead of dealing with the underlying issues or the context.

Posted by: Sara | September 16, 2007 at 05:17 PM

I noticed as a child that the shabby houses of the blacks near our country club had fancier (and cleaner) cars than we did. As if white people were immune to overspending for reasons of status.

Posted by: Ralph L | September 16, 2007 at 06:36 PM

Sarah:
SteveMG - when I was maybe 9 or 10, I asked an adult, "why do all the "colored" people (I know really dating myself) drive expensive Cadillacs." I

Yes, I had a similar experience (we're all dating ourselves).

When I was about 5 or 6 about 40 years ago, we lived in Jacksonville, NC as my father was stationed at Camp Lejeune marine base.

A black driver had rear-ended my father's car and agreed to pay the damages. Well, several weeks went by and every time my father went to his house, he said he didn't have the money.

Eventually, my father asked a policeman to go with him (I tagged along) to go to the black man's home and get the money.

Well, the house was, sad to say, a shack. Just terrible. But his car was, yep, a cadillac. I remember thinking that all the black people I had seen drove cadillacs.

Even worse, when the black man saw my father with a police officer, he started to shake and get real scared. He pulled out his wallet and paid my dad.

Until then, I really had no knowledge or experience with black people.

(Okay, Harper Lee I ain't).

SMG

Posted by: SteveMG | September 16, 2007 at 06:48 PM

Sara, I knew a woman who was the daughter, grand-daughter, great grand-daughter, and great great grand-daughter of four blacksmiths, the last two of whom collected anvils. She had a collection of two hundred anvils, and the Smithsonian wanted them, but expected her to pay the freight. Needless to say, a smaller, more local, museum got them.
===============================

Posted by: kim | September 16, 2007 at 10:08 PM

Perhaps we can trace this cultural difference of the love of bling or houses all the way back generations to the climate of the respective races. Europeans mostly came from cold climates where the house was a life or death situation, Africans came from a warmer climate where shelter had less significance. Could be a theory.

By the way, love the reference above to Swede philosopher Thorsten Veblein(sp?). I picked up his book accidentally in my highschool library and even though the writing style was kind of hard to understand (maybe it was the translation) started reading it and it really opened my eyes to the meaning behind so many of our status symbols. I think his writing is just as important as Freud to understand our societal psychology.

Posted by: sylvia | September 17, 2007 at 03:52 AM

When I was a kid cars to the blacks were bling. They lived in rental shacks owned by whites. Filthy run down places with no grass just dirt yards but had cadillacs parked in the front yard. This was their bling. There were nicer neighborhoods they could have moved to but it was way cool for them to drive down the streets so everyone could see them. Yeah, their houses were dirty, nasty shacks they never cleaned up but the cars shone with cleanliness. Go figure.

Posted by: BarbaraS | September 17, 2007 at 05:06 AM

Also gold teeth fillings were bling to the blacks. The cars and the fillings were their way of showing success.

Posted by: BarbaraS | September 17, 2007 at 05:09 AM

My Taiwanese wife tried to buy me god-awful thick gold necklace bling...I tried to explain to her that "my people" didn't wear bling, but it did not compute. I tried to explain that maybe Italians could wear it...was it a Friends episode where Joey and Chandler has matching bling?

It was interesting as usual to have your deep-rooted cultural preferences come to the surface.

Posted by: Aaron | September 18, 2007 at 05:54 AM