Women earn a fraction of the amount of men. On average they hold jobs of less importance and much less income. This is partly a case of gender discrimination, but that is another subject. The point is when the gender as a whole is limited to a low level of opportunity, there can't be as much of a gap in income in different segments, simply because they're all payed lower amounts.
Don't agree.
Certainly, women on average earn less, but the notion that gender discrimination is
so severe that there is in effect no difference between White women and non-White women makes no sense. Would not various forms of discrimination have a cumulative effect?
Plus, according to your position, gender discrimination is a problem which by your own admission is of far, far greater import than racism, and would thus have the first call on resources.
On the other hand, men as a gender hold most positions of power and high incomes. That is why there can be a much wider gap in income within different segments. Therefore the results in this gender are much more telling because men as a gender have far more opportunity.
Again, don't agree. There is a difference to be sure but the difference is not as stark as all that. Even if it were, if racism = lack of opportunities and sexism = lack of opportunities, one would expect that their effects would be
cumulative. The fact that they are not requires explaination not dismissal.
This sounds like you're reaching for something far fetched. Can you give some real life examples of these cultures for men? I mean there may be some minor affects in certain cultures, but not enough to produce such large disadvantages to the point of having signifcantly lower earnings.
Not *my* theory alone, but one mentioned in the cite *you* produced, as I point out above.
Certainly, one can easily find numerous examples of traditional societies under pressure by immigration - one that made the news recently was the example of young Somalians attracted to after-hours (mostly Black) dance clubs, where they get introduced to a culture in which drinking, drugs and casual violence are more prevelent - much to the horror of their parents, who are however finding it very difficult to stop them.
One can imagine that a young Somali woman who rebels against her parents may in fact better her situation
on average - the fact that she would be less likely to be married and producing kids at an early age (the norm in traditional Somali culture) more than balances out the temptation of the nightlife/underclass. OTOH, a young Somali man's position would be relatively worse off on average - in terms of education, financial and social prospects.
One sees this pattern repeated in Toronto, and there are no lack of examples - the fact is that young men everywhere have the potential to be attracted to a life of drinking, drugging and gang violence, and there is no doubt that this has a very bad effect on their prospects - and culture shock explains why young men from *some* cultures are more likely to succumb than others. One can hardly be ignorant, reading the news, that young "racialized' men are more likely on average to succumb to the lure of this lifestyle in Toronto. I have often seen articles in which this, too, is blamed on "racism", but once again I think this totally misses the mark. I think the cause is
cultural - a breakdown of traditional cultural norms leading to young men unwilling to get married and settle down, more attracted to violent and mysogenist aspects of popular culture, more prone to gangs and drugs:
http://www.thefreeradical.ca/Rap_contributes_to_Toronto_violence.htm
My point is that this has little to do with "race" per se. Young White men feel the lure of these things as much as young Black men do, or men of any race - young men are the same world over; they are interested in sex, are tempted to think of women as sex objects, do not wish to be tied down to family and community obligations, are fascinated by male bonding and violence as a test, are interested in intoxication ...
What differs is the amount of control their cultures effectively exercise over them to keep 'em in line on the straight and narrow.
Problem is that, when comming from a very traditional culture to a comparatively liberal one, the tendency of any young person of spirit is to
rebel - our (Western) culture in effect encourages and even glorifies a certain amount of rebellion. Thing is, not all rebellion is good or ends well. For those whose culture is more in alignment with the Canadian culture, rebellion can more easily be managed and contained within reasonable limits (on average). Parents may have been rebels themselves, and certainly the notion is not so horrifying or alienating. First-generation immigrant parents (and anecdotally, I've known many) are quite often horrified at what their second-generation kids are up to - and have no real idea of how to handle it. The old certainties do not work well in the new country, often they don't even know what their kids are doing, find it difficult to relate with the authorities when they get in trouble, etc.
Again your theory is vague and doesn't sound very convincing.
On the contrary, I think it explains the available evidence quite well. To my mind, the notion that the difference is all down to
discrimination or
bigotry does not fit the actual statistical information, does not explain why some groups such as Sikhs and Jews evidently do not suffer in spite of the fact that Sikhs at least are a very visible minority, and quite fails to account for the fact that this problem is apparently a "man only" problem.
In reality, the "bigotry" explaination appears to me to be imported wholesale from the US, which has a very different historical trajectory.
That statistics site is a good find and the sort of thing the article would have done well to reference. You will note that the source you posted paints a somewhat different picture than the one in the article, and one that does not support its conclusions.
