Are blacks "disadvantaged"?

For many years we've been conditioned to look at "Hispanic" or "African-American" as if these groups are disadvantaged.  The media refers to them as such countless times and, as conventional wisdom correctly has it, repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it.  I picked a mainstream article, at random, that deals with black being "disadvantaged" in order to dissect it to try to figure out what "disadvantaged" means.

This article is titled "Blacks the Most Disadvantaged Racial Group in Pittsburgh".  Here are the ways blacks are "disadvantaged" according to this article:

Families, Youth, and Elderly
Blacks and Whites in the Pittsburgh region, like those across the nation, live largely in racially segregated communities. This has serious implications for Black communities, which are often disadvantaged in many quality-of-life factors, including job and transportation access and public safety. Only about one-quarter of Black women in Pittsburgh are married, compared with half of White and Hispanic women and two-thirds of Asian women.

It is worth noting that, according to the 2000 census, blacks comprise 27.12% of Pittsburgh's population.  This is considerably higher than the nation as a whole.  Whites comprised 67.63% of the city.  Are they "disadvantaged" by being segregated from the blacks?  In many cities across America we find Orthodox Jews, who make up only a tiny percentage of the population, existing in segregated communities.  Are they "disadvantaged"?  Segregation is only a disadvantage to an ethnic group if that ethnic group underperforms in important ways.  It is a disadvantage if that ethnic group depends on other ethnic groups for business initiative, creativity, social services, education, health care, charity etc.  If that ethnic group is a source of all the above, then it is an advantage to be segregated from groups that don't perform as well; it is less of a burden upon them.  Hence, to call segregation a "disadvantage" is begging the question.

Education
A much higher percentage of Asians and Hispanics in the Pittsburgh area have graduate or professional degrees, compared with Whites and Blacks. Black students are not as proficient as White students in math in grades 5, 8, and 11. The number of Black girls graduating from Pittsburgh public high schools has increased substantially from 2003 to 2004, but the same did not occur for Black boys.

Those of us who recognize the importance of HBD would agree that blacks are, indeed, disadvantaged (as a group) compared to other groups.  But this is not a disadvantage that was imposed from without.  Nobody can be blamed for disparate average I.Q.'s except, perhaps, God himself or Mother Nature.  Of course, when leftists (i.e. the Mainstream media) present us with a "disadvantage", the implication is that it is the white man's fault and, therefore, his responsibility to correct it.  Disparate average I.Q. in blacks  is no more the white man's fault than shorter stature is in Asians.  We accept that Asians tend to be shorter.  So too should we accept that blacks tend to be less intelligent.

Economic Disparities
Home ownership rates in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area are higher for Whites and Hispanics, compared with the rest of the country. And, as is the case throughout the country, Asians in this region have the highest median household income. All four racial/ethnic groups use public transportation at a higher rate to go to work in the Pittsburgh area than do like groups elsewhere in the nation.

Economic disparity has the same cause as educational disparities; they are both consequences of lower average I.Q.'s - as has been already shown in "The Bell Curve".  Leftists will list each and every consequence of low average I.Q. and list it as a separate "disparity" in order to bolster their fallacious claims of pervasive white racism.  Of course they will also point to blogs such as this one as evidence of "racism" - but never in my life have I held another person back, from advancing his career because of his race.  Even if it were in my power to do so, I would not do so.  It is interesting that the author of the article admits that Asians have the highest median household income.  Apparently Mrs. Blake considers it purely coincidence that Asians have the highest average I.Q. and also the highest average income.  It must be the Devil at work to lead us astray into the maw of racism!

Intergroup Relations
About half of Allegheny County’s Black residents and one-fifth of its White residents see race relations as a serious problem both in the region and nation. Half of the county’s Black residents also reported being victims of unfair treatment or discrimination in a store within the last six months. Fewer than half of the county’s Black residents said they believe citizens of all races are treated fairly by the police.

Take a random segment of the population and pound it into their heads, from cradle to grave, that they are victims of unfair treatment and guess what?  They will find unfair treatment everywhere.  If a white person encounters a jerk in his everyday life, he'll say "Wow.  That person is a jerk!".  A black person, encountering that same jerk, is likely to say, "Wow.  That person is a racist!"  Blacks have been conditioned to see racism everywhere.  When they, predictably, report encountering it, the same forces that brought about this situation cite it as proof that they were right.  It is a self-perpetuating racket on a grand scale.  As for the police treating blacks unfairly, this might be so but it should be no mystery why this is so.  Blacks always commit crime far out of proportion to their numbers.  It would be shocking if big city police did not become conditioned to view blacks as potential criminals and treat them accordingly.  This is unfortunate for law-abiding blacks but it should not be difficult for them to understand.  Jared Taylor has already pointed out that men are far more likely to be criminals than women, and so law enforcement will investigate men more aggressively than women:

Everyone knows that a group of unknown men is potentially more dangerous than a group of otherwise similar women. It is entirely reasonable to take precautions around men that one would not take around women. From a statistical point of view, it is just as reasonable to distinguish between blacks and whites as carefully as one distinguishes between men and women. It would be foolish not to lock the car doors when driving through black neighborhoods.

Police, of course, know that blacks commit a great deal of crime, and this explains “racial profiling,” the practice of stopping and questioning proportionately more blacks than people of other races. The police would be crazy not to. They also stop more men than women and more young people than old people. The police know from experience who the crooks are likely to be. If they spent as much time investigating old Asian ladies as they did young black men they would never get their jobs done. Everyone understands that men are more crime-prone than women and they understand why men are stopped more often than women.

The original article goes on to list...

Mental Health
Pitt researchers found the rate of serious mental illness in Allegheny County substantially higher among Blacks than Whites. Whites with an income of less than $25,000 a year have a higher rate of serious mental illness than Whites with a higher income. Blacks who earn less than $25,000 a year have a higher rate of serious mental illness than Whites who earn that amount.

The implication here is that there is a correlation between income and the prevalence of mental illness.  Here I'll quote from the Surgeon General's Report:

African Americans are over-represented in high-need populations that are particularly at risk for mental illnesses:

• · People who are homeless. While representing only 12% of the U.S. population, African Americans make up about 40% of the homeless population.


• · People who are incarcerated. Nearly half of all prisoners in State and Federal jurisdictions and almost 40% of juveniles in legal custody are African Americans.


• · Children in foster care and the child welfare system. African American children and youth constitute about 45% of children in public foster care and more than half of all children waiting to be adopted.

Every one of the above is closely linked to I.Q. and so mental health goes together with educational and economic disparity as explained above.

Criminal Justice
In the Pittsburgh region, most of the Black individuals arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter are involved in cases in the city of Pittsburgh, while the majority of White arrests for the same crimes are outside Allegheny County. The majority of juveniles and adults arrested for property crime in the city are Black, while most of the juveniles and adults arrested for property crime in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area and the nation overall are White.

It is unclear why being arrested in the city, as opposed to being arrested in another area, would be considered a "disadvantage".  In any case, if people feel they are disadvantaged because they commit more crime, the solution is obvious: stop committing crime.  In all fairness, many times leaving a life of crime is much more easily said than done.  Yet there are so many programs, and so many advantages, for blacks who seek to improve themselves, that "lack of opportunity" is no longer a valid explanation in most cases.

There is one disadvantage that American blacks suffer from on a massive scale.  It is the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post: that we are constantly being told it is a disadvantage to be black or Hispanic.  I'm a Jew and most of my life people have expected more of me, intellectually, because of it.  At this point in my life I do not enjoy the feeling of being stereotyped as being a certain way simply because I'm Jewish - even if it's a positive stereotype.  But there is no denying that such expectations would have a positive effect on a child.  What kind of effect does it have upon millions of black and Hispanic children to be constantly told they are "disadvantaged"?  It seems to me that this is child abuse and it should cease immediately.  Let fate take its course and then, when that person is 90 years old and on his deathbed, we can tell him, "by the way, you were disadvantaged."