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Americans don't want to imagine that our racist history is actually an ongoing, racist reality. We like to look at racism as a thing that has gotten better (if not gone away completely) and that the way black Americans are treated in society is actually colorblind. So, if forced to pick between the idea that our country's structures and systems are biased toward white people or the idea that black communities are flawed, many pick the latter. Some doing so, of course, because they're racist.
- Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks on inner city poverty
- Ta-Nehisi Coates compares them to Obama's remarks
- Jonathan Chait responds
- Coates argues that Chait is misunderstanding history
- Chait says that Coates appears to have changed his mind on the issue
- Coates extends his argument
The past week has seen an extended and thoughtful debate between New York's Jonathan Chait and The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates over whether cultural forces within the black community are to blame for its enduring poverty. (Links to the various points of the debate are at right.) It began after Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan referred to a culture in the inner city where "generations of men" are "not even thinking about working" — remarks broadly seen as racially controversial. Coates' first post largely took aim at President Obama's similar remarks putting blame for poverty on black culture. Chait, responding, indicated that many other Democrats agreed with Obama's position (as distinct from Ryan's). Over three more posts, the argument grew more refined, as I'll outline.
Here is what is beyond dispute: In 2012, 35 percent of blacks lived in poverty, compared to 13 percent of whites. In 1970, those rates were 33.6 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Poverty in the black community is higher, and has been consistently.
There exist three options for that persistence, if we assume that culture might play a role.
- There is something about black culture that prevents black Americans from escaping poverty. We'll call this the black culture option.
- There is something about the culture of being poor that prevents the poor, regardless of race, from escaping poverty. We'll call this the culture-of-poverty option.
- There are no internal cultural forces at play. We'll call this, partly for the sake of stirring the pot, the racism exists option.