Why are minorities always poor?

[Zealot]

First off, I'm from a nation where I'm considered a minority, even though I probably have more European blood than anything. Even when applying for things such as university they have no option for mixed people, it was one or the other. I always hear about how we make up the majority of the prison population, even though we are a minority in terms of population and the economic conditions are a lot worse than those of "white" people. Racism has mostly disappeared although it still rears itself, even among our politicians.

I have a general idea of why this is but if people could direct me to somewhere that has an in-depth analysis, suggest a book or give their opinions I would be grateful. Thanks!

[Travis Bickle]

Minorities are not always poor. Jews are among the richests minority in many nations. They made their own wealth. Despite not being popular.

I live in a rich social democratic country. Ethnic women have surpassed white women in many areas. Ethnic women take longer and higher educations than white women do (in a system with free access to higher education).

Ethnic minority women display higher work dicipline than ethnic minority males. The latter in the margin set fire on dumpster and throw bricks in the streets and often end up in jails and become losers in society. Sure ethnic women have problems too - victims of violence in patriarchal ethnic marriages.

Iranians are among the most well educated minority too. They have different skin colour. I dont buy your generalization.

Chinese and Asian people do not make up the majority of the jail population. Go figure out.

[Zealot]

Minorities are not always poor. Jews are among the richests minority in many nations. They made their own wealth. Despite not being popular.

I live in a rich social democratic country. Ethnic women have surpassed white women in many areas. Ethnic women take longer and higher educations than white women do (in a system with free access to higher education).

Ethnic minority women display higher work dicipline than ethnic minority males. The latter in the margin set fire on dumpster and throw bricks in the streets and often end up in jails and become losers in society. Sure ethnic women have problems too - victims of violence in patriarchal ethnic marriages.

Iranians are among the most well educated minority too. They have different skin colour. I dont buy your generalization.

Chinese and Asian people do not make up the majority of the jail population. Go figure out.

Jews are rich and men of an ethnic minority end up in jail. And you say I'm the one generalizing?

Domestic violence and everything you mentioned was the whole point of this question, so instead of going on a tirade why don't you give a material analysis of your claims.

[khad]

Enjoy your ban.

[RexCactus]

Income inequality between "minority" ethnicities and what is generally considered as the "White" ethnicity (being a combination of European-descended caucazoids) is firstly correspondent with the Gini co-efficient. In nations with more equitable Gini scores, this matters little, as in Sweden (though admittedly Sweden has little comparative ethno-diversity to other nations). In nations like the United States, though, this is quite different. The US took slavery to a new level during the days of the British Empire, to the point of racial targetting and borderline genocide. Following the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, giving "equality" to negroids on the level of caucazoids, Blacks were targetted by Jim Crow laws exploiting their lack of inherited wealth and education from slave days. At the same time, though, immigration of caucazoids from Eastern Europe (which played on European ehtnic tensions) and mongoloids from China and Japan errupted into American nationalism and nativism, which caused the oppression of anyone not both White and of sufficiently "American" ancestry. After the assimilation of nationalities into America, we turned again to Blacks with the Civil Rights Acts of the Johnson Administration, allowing for their assimilation. Still, though, the lack of education and inherited wealth remains from the Jim Crow laws and before. This provides a direct disadvantage to Blacks (by pre-Johnson sentiment) and towards Latinos (centred around immigration and nativist sentiment), as Whites have had less obstacles to becoming middle class in the United States. Today, remnants of this can be seen in the increase of incarceration rates, drug abuse rates, high school drop-out rates, and poverty rates among Blacks and Latinos, a testament to the tendency of the history of our society to victimise the "free" even after so much progress.

[Adorno4498]

Because it's a form of dividing. When the indentured servants f the colonies began rising up, the ruling class said "Okay, okay, fine. BUT WE ALL HATE BLACKS, AMIRIGHTGUYS?!?"
It's easy to create a sense of otherness, as humans are primarily fear driven. That goes back to being killed by freaking mammoths. Of course, the ramification is that the ruling class uses the creation of this "otherness" as an excuse to exploit, often citing lack of moral standing. It all has to do with social construction of class and morality. In layman's terms, a pile of excuses to quell resistance.

[Nox]

Minorities are poor simply because the majority has a monopoly on everything. The majority also has total control over politics.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

On the US scale at least...

Minorities aren't given the same oppurtunities as whites in the US, I find. Maybe it's due to the circumstances of immigration that hispanic and african-americans tend to be poorer, due to african-americans not being given the chance to leave behind the economic inequality since the era slavery, and hispanics having come from poorer countries. Don't buy all that bullshit that it's related to race itself... a white person and black person put into the exact same circumstance with the exact same opportunities would end up in about the same place with the same effort. Unfortunately racism and stereotyping make that more difficult.

[socialistjustin]

Because they are lazy obviously. /sarcasm

[Ocean Seal]

First off, I'm from a nation where I'm considered a minority, even though I probably have more European blood than anything. Even when applying for things such as university they have no option for mixed people, it was one or the other. I always hear about how we make up the majority of the prison population, even though we are a minority in terms of population and the economic conditions are a lot worse than those of "white" people. Racism has mostly disappeared although it still rears itself, even among our politicians.

I have a general idea of why this is but if people could direct me to somewhere that has an in-depth analysis, suggest a book or give their opinions I would be grateful. Thanks!
They aren't necessarily poorer. South Africa comes to mind where whites are a minority and control more wealth as well as Coptic Christians in Egypt. But, there are always racial differences in wealth, for the reason that generally one race controls politics, and the economy moreso than another. There are other users who will be able to give a better, more detailed account of this, but whichever race is more well represented in the ruling class, and the petit-bourgeoisie tends to do better economically than all the others as well as have a rather comprehensive set of privileges.

[#FF0000]

Minorities are not always poor. Jews are among the richests minority in many nations. They made their own wealth. Despite not being popular.

I live in a rich social democratic country. Ethnic women have surpassed white women in many areas. Ethnic women take longer and higher educations than white women do (in a system with free access to higher education).

Ethnic minority women display higher work dicipline than ethnic minority males. The latter in the margin set fire on dumpster and throw bricks in the streets and often end up in jails and become losers in society. Sure ethnic women have problems too - victims of violence in patriarchal ethnic marriages.

Iranians are among the most well educated minority too. They have different skin colour. I dont buy your generalization.

Chinese and Asian people do not make up the majority of the jail population. Go figure out.

Generally "Model Minorities" in the US are wealthy and well-educated because they came here that way.

For Asian-Americans in particular, there is very little class-mobility.

[Marxaveli]

In my sociology class last year, we examined this issue in detail. It's simple and plain racism, but it is MUCH more below the surface than we think, a so-called type of "laizzes-faire" racism if you will. Because it is no longer legal to blatantly discriminate against minorities, the ruling class has found many other methods to keep segregation alive and well. For instance, studies show that a white person with a felony conviction STILL has a higher % chance to get a call back from a job interview than a black person with no conviction - 17% and 14% respectively. Crimes committed by minorities tend to carry harsher punishments as well. An example would be drugs. Cocaine, which is typically considered a more upper class drug, carries a far less stiff penalty than if one is caught with the same amount of Crack-Cocaine, which due to its lower production cost, is typically sold in more poor areas where minorities often live. These are just two small things, but it is these and so many others which keep minorities segregated and poorer than whites. Such areas where minorities live, naturally, receive much less funding for their schools, so they get a lower quality education, and many public resources like libraries are often either non-existent or severely under funded. Notice how even in working class neighborhoods, you will see a Burger King or McDonalds on almost every corner, but if you go to a place like Beverly Hills you have to drive practically 5 miles in between each fast food joint. There is a reason for this....and I'm sure most of you can guess what it is.

[Belleraphone]

I wouldn't say all minorities are poor. In America at least, Jews are richer than the average person. Asians too, look up Super Minority. It's just a matter of how the immigrants got here. The hispanics are poor because anyone can walk across a border and it's easier to learn English, but Asians have to buy a boat/plane ride and learn English which is a lot harder if you're Chinese/Vietnamese rather than Latin American because of the language differences.

[A Marxist Historian]

I wouldn't say all minorities are poor. In America at least, Jews are richer than the average person. Asians too, look up Super Minority. It's just a matter of how the immigrants got here. The hispanics are poor because anyone can walk across a border and it's easier to learn English, but Asians have to buy a boat/plane ride and learn English which is a lot harder if you're Chinese/Vietnamese rather than Latin American because of the language differences.

The simple answer is the heritage of history. White racism, the primary form of discrimination against minorities and prime cause of poverty of minorities, has two historical roots. First of all slavery of course, which became identified with Africans four-five centuries ago, so blacks are almost invariably at the bottom of the totem pole everywhere, especially in countries that used to have chattel slavery, but everywhere else too. Hatred of other "non-whites" is rooted in centuries of imperialism, with white Europeans lording it over Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In addition, there is nationalism, which means that in capitalist countries of mixed nationalities, the minority nationalities are hated and brutalized. Serbs in Croatia and Croatians in Serbia, etc. murderous etc. When you had Yugoslavia, a noncapitalist country, this was suppressed for a while, but as Tito's Stalinoid dictatorship was a temporary stopgap solution, when it fell national hatred was right back to its WWII murderous peak.

As nationalism is the fundamental ideology of capitalism, this will continue and get worse year by year till we get rid of capitalism.

Relatedly, there is hatred of immigrants by nonimmigrants, in which national chauvinism is mixed with the fear of native workers that lowpaid immigrants will lower wage standards.

By the way, the prosperity of Asian immigrants to America is recent. Jewish immigrants too actually. To this day, Filipinos tend to be pretty damn poor (except for very recent middle class Filipino immigrants who came over with money), and you still have plenty of dirt-poor Chinese immigrants working in sweatshops, very like the garment sweatshops of a century ago that Russian-Jewish immigrants toiled and suffered in.

Hitler gave anti-Semitism a very very bad name in America, and the Japanese concentration camps gave hatred of Asians a bad name too, especially with all the bait-and-switch stuff during the '40s about how you were supposed to hate the Japanese and love the Chinese one year, and then flip-flop the next and go the other way. So Asians and Jews benefitted a lot from that here.

-M.H.-