The story of deaths of despair; of pain; of addiction, alcoholism, and suicide; of worse jobs with lower wages; of declining marriage; and of declining religion is mostly a story of non-Hispanic white Americans without a four-year degree.
OK - if "Hispanic" (white, brown, black, whatever) without four year degrees doing "better" in terms of "despair; of pain; of addiction, alcoholism, and suicide; of worse jobs with lower wages; of declining marriage; and of declining religion"? If so, we might ask "why?" and maybe that can lead to improvements on the white-side.
Depending on where you are in the U.S., the visible working class jobs are often filled by as many (or more) "Hispanic" persons than non-Hispanic white persons. And, I'm talking manual labor (kitchen help, mowing lawns) not high end trades like plumbers or electricians.
I'm not disagreeing with anything in your article. It just got me thinking why, once again, this situation is based on race/ethnicity, as opposed to "class" (and, yes, YMMV as to what "class" means").
I think much of it has to do with the principle of loss aversion, a cognitive bias that explains why individuals feel the pain of loss twice as intensively than the equivalent pleasure of gain. For the white working class, much of their pain and despair stems not from social comparison (i.e. - seeing minorities improve their situation and prospects while experiencing the opposite), but from watching their way of life slowly crumble in the face of tectonic social changes that they've been unable to do anything about. The contrasting outcomes for African Americans are informative. While it's true that blacks have made at best modest wage gains in recent years, and although blacks do worse than whites on many indicators, even than less educated whites, black lives are improving on many dimensions while the lives of less educated whites are worsening.
Curious: Are "brown working class", "black working class" and "other working class" any better off?
Is this about skin color - ethnicity, or is this about "working class"?
The story of deaths of despair; of pain; of addiction, alcoholism, and suicide; of worse jobs with lower wages; of declining marriage; and of declining religion is mostly a story of non-Hispanic white Americans without a four-year degree.
OK - if "Hispanic" (white, brown, black, whatever) without four year degrees doing "better" in terms of "despair; of pain; of addiction, alcoholism, and suicide; of worse jobs with lower wages; of declining marriage; and of declining religion"? If so, we might ask "why?" and maybe that can lead to improvements on the white-side.
Depending on where you are in the U.S., the visible working class jobs are often filled by as many (or more) "Hispanic" persons than non-Hispanic white persons. And, I'm talking manual labor (kitchen help, mowing lawns) not high end trades like plumbers or electricians.
I'm not disagreeing with anything in your article. It just got me thinking why, once again, this situation is based on race/ethnicity, as opposed to "class" (and, yes, YMMV as to what "class" means").
I think much of it has to do with the principle of loss aversion, a cognitive bias that explains why individuals feel the pain of loss twice as intensively than the equivalent pleasure of gain. For the white working class, much of their pain and despair stems not from social comparison (i.e. - seeing minorities improve their situation and prospects while experiencing the opposite), but from watching their way of life slowly crumble in the face of tectonic social changes that they've been unable to do anything about. The contrasting outcomes for African Americans are informative. While it's true that blacks have made at best modest wage gains in recent years, and although blacks do worse than whites on many indicators, even than less educated whites, black lives are improving on many dimensions while the lives of less educated whites are worsening.
I grew up in Maryland; otherwise, what he said. ^^