Brown Supremacy?

Debunking Race Disparities

Take a look at the graph. A quick search of the Statistics Canada website reveals similar disparities of household income along ethnic lines (2016 Census data).

• Filipino: $92,830

• Sri Lankan: $89,440

• Indian: $86,810

• Chinese: $85,000

• Iranian: $82,050

• Pakistani: $78,650

• Israeli: $77,970

• Japanese: $80,180

• Korean: $73,460

• The Average Canadian: $70,336

• Arab: $70,240

• Nepalese: $68,520

• Indonesian: $66,920

• Thai: $66,610

• White: $67,910

• Latin American: $63,910

• Vietnamese: $61,390

• Cambodian: $52,360

• Laotian: $47,320

• Black: $45,540

If you believe the data then isn’t this indicative that society is imbued with brown supremacy? But look closely and you’ll notice some abnormalities. There are “brown” ethnicities at the bottom of the distribution. Whites are nowhere near the top in either US or Canada, raising serious doubts about the concept of systemic white supremacy. But blacks seem to always be at the bottom. So doesn’t that mean we have systemic anti-black oppression?

Before diving deep into the statistics of income disparities by ethnicity I want to examine two institutions that are near and dear to my heart. The first is the NBA. The NBA is 70% black. Over the last 50 years, the top ten NBA players each year are almost always 100% black with few notable exceptions (i.e. Luka Doncic, Steve Nash, Larry Bird, Jerry West, Dirk Nowitzki and John Stockton). It has been like this ever since I was a boy watching MJ and the Bulls. It’s hard to argue that the NBA is biased and not meritocratic given the objective data and statistics on every player, team and coach.

Which brings me to the second institution which is much more subjective in judging merit. It is the influential music genres of Rap, Hip-hop, Rhythm and Blues. The data is even more skewed in favor of blacks again for at least the last 50 years. I can only think of one artist that I would put in the top 100 rappers of all time that isn’t black and you better know who he is. Ever since I was a boy and even now I still listen to Biggie, 2pac, RunDMC, SaltNPepa and LLCoolJ. I used to watch Black Entertainment Television (BET) endlessly. Even today my daughter’s favorite song is Shoop by SaltNPepa and my son’s is Hypnotize by Notorious B.I.G. The first album my parents ever bought me was a Compact Disc (CD) by a group called Wreckx-N-Effect. The album was Hard or Smooth with the hit song Rump Shaker on it. This was Grade 5 in the mid 90s. My parents had absolutely no clue what was on that album.

These two industries are influential cultural and social behemoths. In terms of objective metrics they are money and status making machines. These black players and artists are some of the richest people in our society and history. And not a single Asian person to be found (ok maybe Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin).

The CEOs of top rap and hip hop record companies and the NBA owners are and always have been dominated by white executives with some notable exceptions (Russell Simmons of Def Jam and JayZ of Roc-A-Fella come to mind).

How did these two institutions, the shining beacons of black excellence do it? How did the predominantly white executives examine their implicit biases and solve the oppression problem decades ago and create over-represented institutions of black excellence before any of us heard the words diversity, inclusion and equity. Are they now systemically but covertly oppressing non-black ethnicities keeping them out of these lucrative institutions. Is saying “White Men Can’t Jump” a microaggression that is “othering” white men keeping them from getting into the top ranks of the NBA? BTW, that movie was one of my favorites as a kid. I hope the reboot does it justice. But I digress.

The NHL is dominated by people that live above this line. But field hockey is dominated by people that live below the line. Is the southern hemisphere oppressing the northern hemisphere when it comes to field hockey. But magically the oppression is reversed when it comes to ice hockey (and figure skating). Are you saying we couldn’t find anyone in Antarctica to play in the NHL? There’s no biracial penguins that can win a gold medal in figure skating? They literally dance all day…ON ICE!!! Just take a look at this totally legit video:

It gets even more interesting when you look at other sports. Cricket is skewed more towards South Asians. While it’s closest cousin, baseball, is completely devoid of brown people in the MLB. Badminton and table tennis is skewed towards East Asians. Sprinting is dominated by Jamaican blacks but long distance running is dominated by East African blacks. Even the so called “world’s game” is completely over-represented by whites, blacks and hispanics even though 50% of the world is Asian.

And then there’s the twilight zone that is the NFL. The kickers are almost all white, the quarterbacks mostly white and the running backs are almost all black. The defense is completely over-represented by blacks. Despite the coaching staff being mostly white. It’s been like this for decades. How does this work exactly? The white coaching staff sit in a room and decide to be internalized racists when picking the kickers, kind of racist when picking the quarterbacks and then Ibram X. Kendi walks in the room smacks them all with his book “How to be an Anti-Racist” and they all go “My bad, Dr. Ibram” and decide to pick blacks for running backs and the defensive line? And this happens every season, for every team, year after year for the past 50 years? Who did the smacking before Dr. Ibram was even born…Angela Davis?

Are these systems meritocratic or oppressive? Could it be that well designed meritocratic systems over the long run select for certain pre-requisites out of a large population that naturally produce race disparities in outcomes. Including the system that determines household income? Well now it gets interesting. Some more cynical readers may think I’m suggesting that something about race determines group outcomes. But as previous examples should demonstrate it has almost nothing to do with race.

Let’s start with the word “household”. Some households have many more income earning people living at the same address than other households. Indian cultures are well known for having more households where adult married children earning income live in the same household as their married parents who have yet to retire. So the first thing you should do is adjust the graph by taking the average income per adult and you will see the disparity in the graph between the different ethnicities shrink a bit.

Next you should factor out age cohort. It’s no secret that younger people earn less than middle aged people who earn less than older people who finally earn more than retirees. This is called the life-cycle hypothesis of income. The older you get the more experience, expertise, skill and professional network you develop allowing you to earn more as you age. So the older people in each ethnicity will skew the income distribution. So adjust for age cohort (i.e. genz, milennial, genx, boomer, silent) and the disparity shrinks some more.

Next you have to adjust for education level. People with Phds, Masters and Bachelors earn more than people with high school or no high school diploma. Data from the Dept. of Education shows a remarkable skew towards post secondary education in Asian populations. Also not every degree is the same. A STEM degree will earn much more than a marketing/sales degree which will earn more than a degree in underwater basket weaving.

Also not all degrees turn into the same job specialty. A medical doctor that specializes in cardiac surgery vs. another medical doctor that does psychiatry will earn different incomes even at the same age and with the same degree (i.e. an MD). Also the same job specialty may earn differently if you work in a private vs a non-profit or a public institution as well as if your place of work is urban vs. suburban or rural. The cost of living in a city is a lot higher than in the burbs so incomes adjust for that.

You also have to adjust for hours worked. A good proxy is marital status. A single never married person without children at the same age with the same degree works longer hours in the same job specialty in any given year on average than a person who gets married and has children. It should come as no surprise that marriage and children reduce your ability to earn income as spending time with your spouse and/or children reduces the number of hours worked in a year.

So it would seem that if you want to earn more household income, race has very little to do with it. You just have to get a medical degree, become a cardiac surgeon, live and work in the most posh city you can think of, do nothing but complicated heart surgeries 24/7 taking time off only to eat and poop, claw your way up the complex socio-political ladder of the job hierarchy, get older and live with other solitary middle-aged workaholic cardiologists. Problem solved. Don’t forget to feed your cats.

But seriously it would seem some ethnicities do/achieve more of those things than other ethnicities hence the income disparity. When you adjust the graph for all those factors the disparities by ethnicity shrinks to almost nothing, statistically insignificant. It’s very hard to create such a graph as adjusting for those disparities is hard to show in a simple 2D graph given all the dimensions (you need some next level MS Excel skills to see the full data). So why do some ethnicities get higher degrees in complicated job specialties and work intensely while housed with multiple others with similar behaviors and live longer? It’s for the same reasons why you see such disparities in sports and music (hint: it again has nothing to do with race and it definitely has nothing to do with systemic oppression). But I’ll save that analysis for another post.

I’ll leave with a shout out to my dad who won’t stop sending me endless forwards especially from the Times of India every time some Indian person becomes an executive. Brown Power!!

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Update: To all the woke Karens sliding into my DMs asking to speak to the manager. My boss is way too busy sipping chardonnay and watching season 3 of Indian Matchmaking. But I never shy away from a challenge. Here’s the breakdown for US blacks over many decades.

Who are those middle and upper class blacks who seem to be earning more than the average American and even above whites. Here’s some hints from the Migration Policy Institute:

• Ghanaian Americans: $71,498.

• Nigerian Americans: $68,658. The top three richest black people in the world are Nigerian.

• Jamaican Americans: $55,925.

• Ethiopian Americans: $54,233

I wonder why these black ethnicities “be gettin’ paid bro!!!”. Here’s another hint.

It has Nothing.

To Do.

With Race.