First of all, thank you for replying and addressing the issue so thoroughly. I would have written out a longer comment to start with but I didn’t think you would bother to address my point.
Right let’s get down to it. As would be natural to assume I am a hard line right winger, BUT I have come to see the progressive critique as being in many ways more accurate than the conservative one. And one of the points I feel this way on is the idea of white privilege. White privilege is absolutely real, and its effects are tangible.
But where I would disagree with you is that this is a moral failing. When it comes to black slave-descendant Americans. (not post slavery black immigrants) And native Americans, I believe that something is owed these people by white America, and they should not live in poverty and squalor. I don’t know exactly what form the helping hand from white America should take, I tend to disagree with what most progressives think it should be, but the point is I believe that there should morally be one.
However the phenomena of white privilege, when disconnected from the historical context of these particular wrongdoings, is not a moral failing at all in my mind. It is the most natural thing in the world for a people to discriminate in favor of their own group, wish for the success of their group, even at the expense of others, and I don’t buy any moral argument saying its a bad thing.
The reason why I brought up the Jewish point is because I made the assumption that Thomas Shapiro was a Jew, and that therefore his critique of an ethnic group on the basis of being more economicaly successful than their competitors was a case of monstrous hypocrisy.
I don’t buy the argument that Jewish success in the US is due to the luck of the market and self-selection pressure alone. When it comes to Nigerians, Hindus, etc... The argument is completely cogent. But unlike in these cases many of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants were part of the bottom strata of society. Not literally the bottom, as you pointed out they would have had more high skilled talents than the average, but a lower societal position than they would normally have had. But not because this was their natural position in a free society, but because they were there due to strict anti-Semitic laws and living restrictions. Once they moved to the more economicaly free US their natural talent and work ethic enabled these poor and badly educated Eastern European Jew’s to soar economicly, in the other cases these are the cream of society coming to the US and succeeding, which is only natural considering their talented tenth status.
Maybe this is the main point which separates the right-wing view from the left-wing one. At every point in your argument you ascribe the economic success or failure of different groups to circumstances beyond their control. With whites, it is inherited wealth, with blacks, a legacy of oppression, with Hindus and Jew’s a naturally self selecting immigration process. (For the most part though, I do agree with you when it comes to the Hindus).
There are countless reasons why I reject environmental factors as being the deciding factor in economic success, and the single most obvious in my mind is case study of the Jewish people. Throughout the millennia the pattern remains the same. When not artificially restricted the Jewish people succeed overwhelming in the fields of finance,storytelling,academic learning, artistic endeavors, the list goes on. When put under incredibly intense artificial constraint, the natural proclivity for the Jew to succeed at almost everything can be stymied, but the moment these constraints are eased the Jew once again assumes his natural position.
Wherever black people go, they produce a certain kind of society, level of economic success, and culture. Environment and outside forces play a big role of course, and these are largely responsible for why Jamaica is a nice holiday destination, whereas Haiti is a mess. The same is true of white countries. Historically Eastern Europe and Western Europe have not been that disparate in terms of economy, military etc... the Communist governments in Eastern Europe were a massive environment al effect beyond the people’s control, that made those countries weaker and poorer. However, now that communism is gone Eastern Europe is reverting back to its former prosperity.
However in the case of Black America for example, Civil rights, affirmative action, have all loosed the choke hold on black achievement, and yet the economic disparity remains. Your points about inherited wealth, etc... All hold up at first glance, but if that was all there was to it the gap would not be nearly as large. Japanese Americans, The Boer, Icelandic settlers, the Armenians, just to scatter shot a wide selection from the human race, are all people who had to endure varying degrees of environmental or enemy forces holding them back from thriving, or even surviving, but they all flourished just the same. Success is an equation, which takes into account the personal as well the uncontrollable element, and yet you seem to think human beings have no innate abilities, or personal agency.
Oh, and one final thing. White nationalists would consider you Jewish, but then so would Israel.
