May 7, 2013

Ortiz & Telles: Mexican-Americans lag for 4 generations (at least)

The sociologists who authored the major Generations of Exclusion study tracking two generations of Mexican-American families in Los Angeles and San Antonio from 1965 to 2000 (which I reviewed for VDARE) wrote to the New York Times.

Their second paragraph is an important social science finding and should be cited in immigration debates. 
Mexican Immigrants 
To the Editor: 
Re “Hispanics, the New Italians,” by David Leonhardt (Sunday Review, April 21), and “When Assimilation Stalls,” by Ross Douthat (column, April 28): 
In our book “Generations of Exclusion,” we show that the descendants of Mexicans do not experience the steady progress into the third and fourth generations that has been documented for those of European ancestry. [Bold added]
Throughout the 20th century, Mexicans immigrated primarily to fill low-wage jobs and have been held in low regard, a status shared by many of their descendants. Although many Mexican-Americans do well, too many do not pursue education because they attend low-quality schools or receive the brunt of negative expectations by educators. 
Mexicans and other Latinos — especially Salvadorans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans — also appear to share similar experiences and a nonwhite status that in effect racializes them and channels them into the lowest sectors of our society. 
The solution to poor treatment of immigrants is not to exclude them but to improve educational conditions for all! 
VILMA ORTIZ
EDWARD TELLES
Los Angeles, April 28, 2013

The writers are professors of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Princeton, respectively.  

In their sizable sample, fourth generation Mexican-Americans (i.e., people who had a grandparent born in American) had only a 6% college graduation rate. My recollection is that their preliminary data on the educational attainments of young fifth generation Mexican-Americans was also unpromising.

64 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The solution to poor treatment of immigrants is not to exclude them but to improve educational conditions for all!"

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this sentence. For one, Mexican immigrants today are treated much more liberally than European immigrants a century ago. So how are they treated poorly? They get free food, free housing, free education, free medical care, affirmative action, hiring preference in certain fields, and free legal services when they run into trouble. And as NCLB proves, when you improve educational conditions for all (by spending more money on a Korean cram school curriculum with testing) everybody improves, but outcomes remain stubbornly unequal. No ethnic group gains or loses relative to any other. Mexicans stay at the bottom. I conclude that Mexicans aren't excluded or deprived, they are left behind while other groups move up.

Anonymous said...

That Mexican immigrants exist in the lowest rungs of society for at least four generations after the point of entry seems like it would be sufficient evidence to conclude that it's probably unwise to invite millions more in the near future.

But no, we've gotta solve this problem that's only a thing because of Mexican immigration by introducing even more Mexican immigrants to those areas already burdened to educate the offspring of mercenary farm-labor. Because of racism, or something.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Low expectations by educators. Horrors. A persecution unmatched in the long lamentable recitation of human misery.

Anonymous said...

Makes you wonder why, of the ~20 Latin American countries, there isn't even one that's successful, what with so few Euros there to channel people into the lowest sectors of society.

bjdubbs said...

More helpless victims of "negative expectations." Ever notice how the solution to all problems resides solely inside the craniums of whites? White mindwaves rule the world, shining mindbeams of negative expectations, paralyzing the helpless victims. This is very flattering to whites, which is probably why they like to believe it.

Anonymous said...

Ortiz and Telles suggest that Hispanics are victims of unfounded stereotyping. They confuse cause and effect. The meta-analyses of stereotyping find that "stereotypes" tend to be correct generalizations of actual behavior. That is, Hispanics are generally bad students, and ordinary people, if not liberal elites, have figured this out.

Here in Palo Alto, Hispanics (mostly mestizos) are treated with great deference; the elites want them to succeed. But when it comes time for a test, they rarely perform at an elite level.

At the same time we actually have cases of poor Chinese who have 5 people crammed into one bedroom apartments, but they generally perform well in school and the next generation leaves the one bedroom apartments behind and moves to the upper-middle class.

Dave Pinsen said...

Related: a good piece by Daniel Greenfield on David Horowitz's site: "The Dishonest Attacks on the Heritage "Cost of Amnesty Report".

Also, a good piece by David Frum: "A Nonsense Consensus".

Finally, Zuck's conservative sock puppet group bought some expensive radio spots on NYC's main talk radio station today. They might as well have lit their cash on fire. I doubt they'll convince many with their ridiculous claims.

Hmm. said...

That's not what I read at the Wall Street Journal in February....

LOS ANGELES—Verenisa Alfaro has two master's degrees, owns a home and considers herself solidly middle class. Her Mexican immigrant parents have a third-grade education, held low-paying jobs and still rent in a working-class neighborhood here.

Ms. Alfaro's success may be more prevalent than most people think, according to a study released Thursday, which found that adult children of immigrants are substantially better off than the immigrant generation. By key measures—including education, home ownership and income—they are at least as successful as the general U.S. population.

The independent Pew Research Center based its assessment of the 20 million adult children of immigrants on census data and national surveys. It found that the majority are likely to speak English proficiently and consider themselves "a typical American."


Ladder to Success.

Anonymous said...

The reality is that the Italians, just that one little European country and not necessarily the most innovative, have produced more in the way of science, technology, and art than the whole vast wasteland that stretches from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. One of the chief forms of white-hating racism from the Left is racist denial of white accomplishment. Haters gonna hate, and the Nazi left just can't stand the fact that Europeans have produced 90-95% of all scientific and technological advancement (and virtually all notions of political and personal freedom), it simply drives them wild. Mexicans will never catch up, as long as they remain biologically Mexican (and particularly Indian). Mexico itself is sorted by a racial caste system with the lightest skinned bunched at the top and the Indios (who make up a huge percentage of recent migrants to the U.S.) at the bottom. It won't work any better in the U.S.

Anonymous said...

Hey white people, it's your fault Mexicans don't do well in school! But that's ok, all we need to do is fix the education system, just like we did for blacks.

Why does America set itself up for these Missions Impossible?

Anonymous said...

Academia is such a disgrace...

Anonymous said...

The genius economists said all we have to do if implement free markets around the globe and everyone will be rich. Now they realized that is not working too well and the whole world must move to the US and Europe.

Anonymous said...

How many generations in Mexico will it take to be equivalent to Italy ? Italy is a wealthy country, even with all the current economic problems, Mexico not. If America via some magical process can convert poor people to rich ones, then why can't Mexico do the same.

Anonymous said...

Steve, don't you get it? You have to wait 6 generations for the miracle of crossing the miraculous transformative US border to work its magic and allow these nascent Italians to flower into Michaelangelos and Da Vincis. It's going to happen real soon now.

Anonymous said...

They've been lagging for 40 generations in Mexico, and things are improving somewhat now ONLY BECAUSE first world nations built some factories there.

Anonymous said...

Well, Mexicans do better in some burbs where they can work better paying blue collar jobs or moved up a little. Whites think Downey sucks but it has a lot lower poverty rate than South Central Americans. The problem is that it would have been ok if Mexicans did not have the advantage of birth rates over whites now which means as Pat B predicts the Southwest is a Mexican homeland unless Mexicans still moving into the midwest or south or even Northwest. I read about Mexicans moving to Kansas and so forth were there less of them unexcept some meatpacking towns.

Unknown said...

Great points. It's as though Brooks is saying to conservatives reluctant for amnesty: "If you really want to turn the tides against gay marriage, start appreciating all these Guatemalans and Muslims!"

Svigor said...

Hey Steve, look at Drudge Report. 3 Mestizo-Americans kidnapped 2 white girls and a mestizo girl and kept them trapped in their house for 10 years, birthing 5 babies. I think one was 15 and another 14 when they went missing.

Mexicans doing jobs Americans won't do: kidnapping, child molestation, rape, sex- and birth-slaving.

It's so Tarantino-esque ('cept for the bad guys aren't rednecks, and the victims aren't all non-white) that the press has no choice but to cover it.

Let's see how long the coverage lasts, and ponder how long it would stay on the front burner if the perps were white Americans, and the victims were 2 mestizo girls and 1 white girl.

Svigor said...

Wait, sorry, more credit for Mestizos doing jobs Americans just won't do: free abortions. Apparently they murdered all but one of the (at least) five babies born to the girls in the house.

My favorite quote so far:

Frantic 911 call leads to 3 missing women in Ohio

Neighbor Anna Tejeda was sitting on her porch with friends when they heard someone across the street kicking a door and yelling. Tejeda said one of her friends went over and told Berry how to kick the screen out of the bottom of the door, which allowed her to crawl out.

Tejeda said Berry, dressed in pajamas and old sandals, was nervous and crying.

At first Tejeda said she didn't want to believe who the young woman was. "You're not Amanda Berry," she insisted. "Amanda Berry is dead."

But when Berry told her she had been kidnapped and held captive, Tejeda said, she gave the young woman a telephone to call police, who arrived within minutes and then took the other women from the house.


Cute.

Joo ain' no 'Manda Berrri! 'Manda Berrri ees ded puta! Now get back een jor donjon!

Svigor said...

Diversity is our Strength! It's also kidnapping, rape, child molestation, sex slavery, birth slavery, and child murder!

Haapi Cinco de Mayo!

E Kaufman said...

***The solution to poor treatment of immigrants is not to exclude them but to improve educational conditions for all! ***

This reminds me of a recent Steve Hsu post, recounting the legend of Sisyphus :-) No doubt liberals who believe "improved education" is going to make a difference must feel like this.

"As a punishment, Sisyphus was made to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. Before he could reach the top, however, the massive stone would always roll back down, forcing him to begin again."

http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/myths-sisyphus-and-g.html

E Kaufman said...

I'm going to email the authors of that letter a copy of Marty Nemko's post on behavioural genetics.

"The more I read evaluations of "model" programs designed to change children's environments, the more I became convinced that while environment may matter, genetics matter more. I reviewed the evaluations of Head Start, Title I, the Kansas City experiments of spending massive amounts per child, experiments with having students from Chicago housing projects attend top prep schools, and media-touted "miracle" programs like Marva Collins' schools, Central Park East, and more recently, Ed Trust, and KIPP. When I dug beneath the self-promoting schools' marketing efforts and a media eager to show that education matters, I became ever more certain of the relative power of genetics over education.

Beyond studying those programs' evaluation data, I visited a number of such programs. I've come to believe that a model program is one you haven't visited. My most startling memory is when my wife Dr. Barbara Nemko (Napa County Supt. of Schools and recent regional Supt. of the Year) and I visited Central Park East School, the subject of two glowing features on 60 Minutes, touting Central Park East's test scores as proof that education can close the racial achievement gap. We spoke with the principal, who, after we gained his trust, literally cried and said that the temporary blip in scores came from an impossible-to-sustain monumental effort that faded not long after the cameras left and that, now, the school's achievement scores are right back to the average of the other public schools in Harlem."

http://martynemko.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/behavioral-genetics-most-important.html

Svigor said...

Steve, don't you get it? You have to wait 6 generations for the miracle of crossing the miraculous transformative US border to work its magic and allow these nascent Italians to flower into Michaelangelos and Da Vincis. It's going to happen real soon now.

Miracle generation = n + 1.

Let n = current generation.

Same formula for Whiskey's "Jews will be extinct" schtick.

Anonymous said...

What's more racist, when whites have low expectations or when they have high expectations?

Steve Sailer said...

Whites must hold Mexicans to high expectations and to low standards.

Anonymous said...

I am latin american myself, but i can't help noticing that ASIANS also share "nonwhite status"... Neverthless, they thrive to the top. So, wrong answer. I think the real reason why we lag behind is due to the lower IQ of the average mexican, compared to the average italian (or asian). Anyway, we are still above african americans. Also, intelligent latinos have no trouble in going up in the social ladder: check johny depp, sonia sotomayor, andy garcia, marco Rubio and even mitt romney(which is 3rd or 4th generation mexican, if i remember).

Anonymous said...

Also, intelligent latinos have no trouble in going up in the social ladder: check johny depp, sonia sotomayor, andy garcia, marco Rubio and even mitt romney(which is 3rd or 4th generation mexican, if i remember).

How did you come to the conclusion that Johnny Depp is "latino"?

wren said...

Why is no one talking about the fact (I think) that the Cleveland guys were born in Puerto Rico?

Like the Boston guys, they were the immigrants that we were asking for.

wren said...

Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel Castro moved to Ohio as a child, his uncle Julio Castro said.

Anonymous said...

"But if masses of dirt poor Italians were arriving today and showered with affirmative action and drummed with anti-white hatred, they might become the New Mexicans. "


Maybe but the genetic distance between Northern Europeans vs mestizos is around 35x greater than between Northern Europeans vs Italians.

Anonymous said...

It looks like the Bondage Brothers have "improved" on Tony Montana's formula to get the women. Why bother with all the work involved obtaining the money and the power when it's clearly unnecessary? This is Hispanic ingenuity at work!

David Davenport said...

Alpha beta male Whiskey alert!

The Pill makes women prefer beta males, lose interest in sex.:

SO IF WE’RE GOING TO BE HEARING MORE ABOUT ONLINE PORN AFFECTING MEN’S SEXUALITY [link], then can the pundits (usually women) who write about this stuff pay a little attention to this problem, too? The Pill makes women prefer beta males, lose interest in sex.[link] “Women who used OC ( oral contraceptives ) scored lower on measures of sexual satisfaction and partner attraction, experienced increasing sexual dissatisfaction during the relationship, and were more likely to be the one to initiate an eventual separation if it occurred.”

Anonymous said...

That's not what I read at the Wall Street Journal


That's not what you read in the Official Journal Of Open Borders? Golly, who'd have thunk it?

Anonymous said...

Like the Boston guys, they were the immigrants that we were asking for.

Unfortunately Puerto Ricans are not immigrants. They are allowed to freely come to the USA at will since Puerto Rico is a US Commonwealth. They can come to the USA just as freely as someone from Texas can move to Colorado.

This is one of the lasting legacies of being an empire. We had no business taking Puerto Rico.

Strauss said...

Ok, here are some objective data about "elite" academic performance among countries.

The international mathematics olympiad is among some of the most recognized academic contests worldwide,so i will base on that. Great mathematicias like Terence Tao and Perelman have been among contestants. See how well is doing Mexico:

http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx

As you can see, Mexico results have largely been neither bad, neither very good, they haven been mostly mediocre to some even good participations and in the last year they even overpass some countries like Italy, so i say there is indeed some potential among them.

Anonymous said...

Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel Castro moved to Ohio as a child, his uncle Julio Castro said.

How are vibrant people expected to be so vibrant if they can't kidnap and rape and so forth. Get real!

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

I thought these guys showed that the later generations were not just assimilating more slowly than other immigrant groups, but actually de-assimilating, ie. they were doing worse each generation.

Anonymous said...

At the same time we actually have cases of poor Chinese who have 5 people crammed into one bedroom apartments, but they generally perform well in school and the next generation leaves the one bedroom apartments behind and moves to the upper-middle class.
5/7/13, 4:00 PM This is true, they also fall back of Vietnamese in towns like Westminster. A recent article by the OC Register:Fountain Valley, Suburb of Little Saigon.

Fun said...

The reality is that the Italians, just that one little European country and not necessarily the most innovative, have produced more in the way of science, technology, and art than the whole vast wasteland that stretches from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. One of the chief forms of white-hating racism from the Left is racist denial of white accomplishment. Haters gonna hate, and the Nazi left just can't stand the fact that Europeans have produced 90-95% of all scientific and technological advancement (and virtually all notions of political and personal freedom), it simply drives them wild.

Nobody likes a sore winner.

wren said...

They can come to the USA just as freely as someone from Texas can move to Colorado.

Thanks, I had forgotten that.

Anonymous said...

The "reasons" provided for Mexicans doing poorly with education sound very lame. Surely japanese and Chinese arriving in the 19th century were not regarded with any great fanfare. Fourth generation Japanese and Chinese are probably better educated them most of the general population.

I suspect 4th gen Mexicans are as they are for the same reasons Mexicans are as they are in Mexico. The overall genetic capacities and capabilities of the population.

Anonymous said...

Actually Mexico isn't too poor when compared to other third world countries. This raises an interesting question. What if Mexico didn't border America? What if it was located in another area of the world? What if they couldn't use the USA as a safety valve to get rid of their excess population and get remittances?

Anonymous said...

Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel castro moved to Ohio as a child,...

Just one more reason to give that Spanish speaking, backward and poor island its walking papers.

David Davenport said...

Mexico results have largely been neither bad, neither very good, they haven been mostly mediocre to some even good participations and in the last year they even overpass some countries like Italy, so i say there is indeed some potential among them.

But the Mexicans who are good at math -- palefaced Mexicans -- aren't the ones on welfare and driving low rider old cars in El Norte. Palefaced Mexicans are staying in Mexico, and dumping their dusky-hued lumpen proles into the USA.

Of course it wouldn't be nice to reciprocate.

Scharlach said...

Steve, off topic, but apparently the Smithsonian has stolen your idea about race being an extended family tree . . .

The case of Iceland is an extreme one, but the idea that we are all distant cousins, in the scope of human history, is well accepted. A new study, published today in the journal PLOS Biology, explains this degree of relatedness in modern-day Europeans.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/05/my-big-fat-european-family-what-genomics-tell-us-about-shared-ancestors/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=20130507&utm_content=europeanfamily


Anonymous said...

As you can see, Mexico results have largely been neither bad, neither very good, they haven been mostly mediocre to some even good participations and in the last year they even overpass some countries like Italy, so i say there is indeed some potential among them.

Mexico has around 10 million whites which means they have more whites than Finland and Norway combined. I wonder how much of these scores can be attributed to them.

I doubt the Mexican immigrants coming across our border are either white, or stay in school long enough to participate in the international mathematics olympiad.

So no, I would not write that "there is indeed some potential among them".

Strauss said...

@David Davenport

Ok, some mexicans that do well on these contests do have a more whiteish appearance, but not all of them, many have the appearence of your average mestizo kid if you go some years back.

If you want a more drastic example, see the performance of Peru, a latino country which in the past years have improved dramatically, not all look white, some of the best performers look heavily amerindian.

Anonymous said...

Mexican mediocrity gets much less recognition than the more dramatic pathologies associated with mass immigration. The truth is, your average SoCal Mexican is neither a criminal, an unemployable moron, nor a hostile soldier of the reconquista.

What he is a duskier version of the deracinated White mouth breather, on steroids. He is a consumerist, blockbuster watching philistine who can string together a perfectly adequate sentence but has never uttered an interesting word in his life. He muddles along without malice, and seems pleasant enough so long as you don't remember another, brighter world.

Every once in a while, I'll run into an old school, unbroken blue collar White guy and the fog lifts. While Fishtown isn't in great shape these days, it's easy to forget just how sharp, engaging and competent America's White working class used to be.


-The Judean People's Front.

Anonymous said...


Ok, some mexicans that do well on these contests do have a more whiteish appearance, but not all of them, many have the appearence of your average mestizo kid if you go some years back.

If you want a more drastic example, see the performance of Peru, a latino country which in the past years have improved dramatically, not all look white, some of the best performers look heavily amerindian. This is true to a certain degree that some countries are doing better with Indian Latins. Indians in Mexico to South America seem to have done better before the white man came, so maybe it cultural as well. Mayans were very good at making a lot of calendar calulations and their society might have started earlier than is thought.
5/7/13, 9:09 PM

Ex Submarine Officer said...

Mexican mediocrity gets much less recognition than the more dramatic pathologies associated with mass immigration. The truth is, your average SoCal Mexican is neither a criminal, an unemployable moron, nor a hostile soldier of the reconquista.

What he is a duskier version of the deracinated White mouth breather, on steroids. He is a consumerist, blockbuster watching philistine who can string together a perfectly adequate sentence but has never uttered an interesting word in his life. He muddles along without malice, and seems pleasant enough so long as you don't remember another, brighter world.

Every once in a while, I'll run into an old school, unbroken blue collar White guy and the fog lifts. While Fishtown isn't in great shape these days, it's easy to forget just how sharp, engaging and competent America's White working class used to be.


This is superb - I remember when I was young and knowing people who had blue collar dads who were pretty intelligent, read books, maybe play a little chess. Not rocket scientists, although some were basement inventors, but generally sharp individuals.

Gone with the wind.....

john marzan said...

American Anglos stole California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona from Mexico, according to CBS report here

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/05/06/mo_rocca_s_dead_serious_low_info_cbs_news_report_greedy_america_stole_half_of_mexico_in_an_unjust_war

Svigor said...

"The reality is that the Italians, just that one little European country and not necessarily the most innovative, have produced more in the way of science, technology, and art than the whole vast wasteland that stretches from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. One of the chief forms of white-hating racism from the Left is racist denial of white accomplishment. Haters gonna hate, and the Nazi left just can't stand the fact that Europeans have produced 90-95% of all scientific and technological advancement (and virtually all notions of political and personal freedom), it simply drives them wild."

Nobody likes a sore winner.


You mean, White people don't like White people who are sore winners. Indians and Jews seem to love being sore winners.

But you're right, White people find it unseemly. But that's what happens when you drag people into court and blame them for someone else's congenital defects; you get defense attorneys saying things that hurt your feelings. Best not to bring such frivolous suits if you have a thin skin.

Jonathan Silber said...

Mexican immigrants to America, though stuck at the bottom, perform well in the jobs that they qualify for--and these are important jobs: cook, busboy, laborer, mechanic, construction worker, counterman, and the like.

I shudder at the thought of allowing to immigrate here only college graduates, most of whom seek
and end up in some office job pushing paper.

Also, it's know-it-all graduates of college, not Mexican peasants, who think up and promote all the crackpot ideas that are ruining the country.

That said, any and all illegal immigrants should be deported, and a moratorium established on further immigration, in particular of Mexicans, who are already here in numbers too great: if I wanted to live in a Mexico-like country, I'd moved to Mexico.

Mimi said...

The time & places where los Indios can be said to thrive were in the three pre-Columbia empires of the Maya, Aztec and Inca.

All three were extremely authoritarian with religion and politics inextricably linked. Individualism or initiative was strongly discouraged and often punished.

For example, the Aztecs regulated what clothes you could wear based on your class and enforced harsh penalties for disobedience (they had a fascinating and well developed court system of appeals courts and special courts for merchants.) The Inca's regulated nearly every hour of the day from what time to wake up,, work in the fields, eat lunch and celebrate special occasions (there were many and they were not optional.) And Maya childrearing practices (headbinding, eye crossing, teeth sharpening, discipline) would land your kids in state custody. Yet they were able to build cities, expand their populations, conquer their neighbors and function with very low crime rates as opposed to daily life in modern Latin America.

Someone much smarter than me (can't remmeber if it was Steve or maybe Jared Taylor) suggested that genetically some people (Northern Europeans) thrive in a libertarianish society while others can only succeed with strick top-down control (and some other we know of can never succeed.)

They and the mestizos are only ever going to be mediocre in a Western, liberalized society. It is just their nature.

Rohan Swee said...

John Marzan: Interesting link. That is, interesting and illustrative example of the nature of the full-court propaganda press going on now. Or perhaps merely evidence that the "useful idiot" academics available now are of considerably poorer intellecutual quality than the useful idiots that the left used to produce.

Quote from the link:

Because a lot of people live in land that was taken from Mexico in this war, and they're not aware of that. I believe a lot of the immigration debate that's going on now operates in a vacuum where people are not realizing that, in fact, Mexicans are here in lands that once belonged to Mexico.

I realize it's easy to come off as a complete cretin in sound-bite land, but...wtf? Golly gee, professor, that land was once part of Mexico? Who knew?!? We shall all now re-align our views in light of this stupendous revelation!

Is that the plan - to so relentlessly "enstupidate" the public debate that anyone with an IQ over room temperature will throw up his hands in utter despair and surrender, out of fear that further exposure will only end with him in fetal position in the corner, mumbling and rocking himself?

Does Professor Greenberg's intellect really operates at this "low information" level, or is she deliberately keepin' it dumb for the cause?

I actually prefer the latter. It pains me to think that one can teach at a (afaik) not badly-regarded public university, and be as much of a dumb propaganda-parrot as the woman appears to be. It's possible (in fact, sadly probable) that the average CBS viewer really doesn't know that the Southwest was once claimed by Mexico City, with the standard disregard for the prior claims of the indigenes.* What's considerably more depressing is that a "scholar", while babbling on portentously about Manifest Destiny, betrays no awareness that Mexican claims to that territory are every bit as much a product of the "manifest destiny", claim-it-and-grab-it imperial MO, as anything the gringos pulled off. (Hey, at least Washington paid a few millions more for the land they "stole" than Mexico City ever paid to they natives they stole it from.)

These days, I honestly would not be shocked to learn that she believed that modern "Mexico" was a pre-Columbian political entity.

*Oops, I forgot. It's only "stealing" if the thief spoke English.

Anonymous said...

Indians in Mexico to South America seem to have done better before the white man came, so maybe it cultural as well. Mayans were very good at making a lot of calendar calulations and their society might have started earlier than is thought.


I am no expert on Latin American history, but I am pretty sure that tiny native ruling classes were, uh, killed directly and a huge fraction of the rest died from Euro diseases. Which left those of mixed heritage who inherited resistance and the very remote dwelling ultra primitives.

Someone help me out here, if I got it all wrong.

Beliavsky said...

The NYT does print HBD comments, and I encourage Steve's readers to post them. For example in the comments to

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/education/in-california-diversity-in-college-starts-earlier.html
In California, Push for College Diversity Starts Earlier

someone wrote

asteroid-b612 baltimore
The real problem (and disgrace) is the failure of secondary schools in poor black and Latino neighborhoods to properly prepare their students for college. Affirmative action addresses the symptom while leaving the underlying disease to fester.
May 8, 2013 at 8:16 a.m.

to which I responded

Beliavsky
The average of IQs of American blacks and Hispanics are 85 and 90, vs. 100 for whites, and the failure of high schools to prepare most blacks and Hispanics for college results from this.

and got 19 "likes".

ben tillman said...

Also, a good piece by David Frum: "A Nonsense Consensus".


Wow - I'm amazaed that he made the same point I've been making:

[W]e hear concern about “labor shortages,” “skills mismatches,” and “jobs Americans won’t do.” In a market economy, however, there are no shortages. There is always a price at which supply will rise to meet demand.

ben tillman said...

Calling Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio "Latino" is like calling F.W. de Klerk and Oscar Pistorius "black".

No, it's like calling them African.

Bob Loblaw said...

American Anglos stole California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona from Mexico, according to CBS report here

That's essentially true, and we were able to do it by swamping those territories with Anglo settlers.

Anonymous said...

Well, New Mexico fits perfect with this study, its Mexicans have been in the States longer than any one state with a lot of Mexicans and New Mexico is 4th worst in out of wedlock births after DC, MS, LA which are black.

Anonymous said...

Ex Submarine Officer: This is superb - I remember when I was young and knowing people who had blue collar dads who were pretty intelligent, read books, maybe play a little chess. Not rocket scientists, although some were basement inventors, but generally sharp individuals.

Gone with the wind.....

I haven't even hit 30 yet, so the rapidity of the decline within my lifetime is shocking. Even as late as the 90's, it wasn't unheard of to encounter a blue collar high school graduate that read real books. Not that most casual autodidacts would read Teilhard de Chardin for kicks, but they were often better read than today's execrable crop of grad students.

In an era full of lamentable social trends, the loss of the intelligent craftsman is one of the least appreciated, but most devastating, IMO. It doesn't merely represent the loss of technical competence. It is the loss of an important personality type. As a personality type, the intelligent craftsman ranks with the scholar and the warrior in exemplifying what is best in man. The utter degradation of the human personality is a black mark on our age, and it is blacker than any crime statistic, dependency ratio, or drop in aggregate test scores.

Well, enough angry nostalgia. I'm too young for this shit.

-The Judean People's Front

rob said...

Eric said...
American Anglos stole California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona from Mexico, according to CBS report here

That's essentially true, and we were able to do it by swamping those territories with Anglo settlers.


ZOFG! So there's a region of Mexico with good roads, more or less honest justice system, and jobs for Mexicans? A part of Mexico that's so awesome that Mexicans want to live there? How did Mexico manage that? Oh, just think if there were like 10-15 million American-Americans to spare, we could annex all of Mexico, and lickety-split it'd be a decent place for Mexicans.

Why, if American-Americans and Europeans worked together this white person's burden could be spread over enough people that the burden for any individual woman and man would be light. There could be enough whites guide the teaming masses in other lands and build functional, civilized societies in troglodyte nations. They could live under our laws, learn our languages, arts and sciences. The best and brightest could attend the finest Universities in the West, and pick up the weight of guiding their brothers and sisters, creating a self-sustaining progress after we prime the pump, so to speak. Then Europeans and Americans could return home, and look forward to gratitude from our uplifted fellows, satisfied and productive in their homelands. They could weave a multicultural quilt, western and civilized underneath a patina, an exotic gloss of quaint folkways and silly dances intact.

One might object on the basis of history, but that was totally different. This time good, anti-racist white people will try.

If that goes imperfectly, surely allowing millions upon millions of our little brothers and sisters into our countries to scrub toilets and mow lawns while they transform into Westerners with a frisson, a spark of exotic difference, that'll work for sure.

If not, we can just bomb the troglodytes who stayed in their backwards lands into civilization. Their brothers and sisters here would never be surly or angry about that.

I sure wish advanced people were spreading into the failed and backwards lands. Maybe Brooks and Zbug could move to some third world nation: imagine how many more servants, er disciples, they could acquire.

Svigor said...

Well, enough angry nostalgia. I'm too young for this shit.

Yeah, I have to warn you, if you're already pissed about this stuff in your twenties, you're going to be at the lock and load stage by thirty.

Because a lot of people live in land that was taken from Mexico in this war, and they're not aware of that. I believe a lot of the immigration debate that's going on now operates in a vacuum where people are not realizing that, in fact, Mexicans are here in lands that once belonged to Mexico.

TL;DR version: Mexico stole it first!