Utah and the American Dream

[Calm]

12 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Yes, my concern with schools is more with my children rather than economic mobility.  I think the cause is a certain libertarian tendency in Utah that just hates government spending - particularly taxes - even when it's in an area that traditionally has been a government focus.

I think though if we're looking at exporting solutions that there's a correlation not causation effect. That is the people who aren't married often don't have the skills to have good marriages. Plus there's a lot in their environment working against good marriages. So if people just got married more in say Mississippi that wouldn't necessarily have a causal consequence of better upward mobility. The reality is that the people in Utah are socially different and that matters. 

My own political view is that we should be trying to increase mobility in terms of getting the poor to move to where the jobs are and move to where there's better social environments. Dense neighborhoods of poverty are not good. There's a fair bit of economic literature on this.

Likely what's happening in Utah is the peer effect where even people in bad family situations have more peers who are in good ones. That then helps them first off set expectations, see examples but also have more incentive to rise to those situations.

I have always been impressed in Utah of the mix of small, older housing and newer ones.  It makes for a sometimes disorienting visual picture, but the social mix is great imo.  In areas of completely new growth, there isn't quite the diversity...a farmhouse left from the orchards and fields here and there, but elsewhere quite interesting.  We have houses built in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a number of the really blah bungalows of the 50s and 60s, my street has a third of the homes built late 80s and early 90s and then we have a half dozen or so quite wealthy built in the last decade (land is too high here for building small these days).  Up the hill a little way we have a mix of old farmhouses with their barns and mansions.  

Edited March 28, 2017 by Calm

[pogi]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I think though if we're looking at exporting solutions that there's a correlation not causation effect. That is the people who aren't married often don't have the skills to have good marriages. Plus there's a lot in their environment working against good marriages. So if people just got married more in say Mississippi that wouldn't necessarily have a causal consequence of better upward mobility. The reality is that the people in Utah are socially different and that matters. 

Right, that is why it might be effective to invest in promoting stronger marriages (not just getting hitched).  We are socially different in Utah, and that does matter - but these are social/marriage skills that can be learned.  There is so much evidence to show how strong marriages and family life can positively effect a child's long-term outlook.  There is also tons of evidence on the negative effects of single parent homes/divorced families on a child's long-term outlook.  The emotional impacts and increased stresses can negatively affect children's performance at school and life.  Without a strong home foundation, the best education may have little impact.  With a strong home foundation on the other hand, even the worst education in the country can have much impact.  This is what the evidence seems to suggest from the article anyway.

Edited March 28, 2017 by pogi

[Darren10]

For the past few years me and my family have been the recipients of aid. We use both governmentsl and Church assistance. The Church's efficiecy definitely overshadow government's. Not that governmental assistance does not help us but it has a lot it can learn from the Church. Not sure it ever will since the Church is focused on serving Christ wgich I would say is ultimately the true secret to its success. 

[stemelbow]

 

53 minutes ago, pogi said:

At least I can show correlation.  What do you have?

The point is that you cannot show correlation between race and upward mobility when you control for other factors.  There is strong correlative evidence between marriage and upward mobility despite race.  This eliminates race as a factor and makes marriage status a much better indicator. 

 

It doesn't eliminate race as a factor at all. 

[pogi]

1 minute ago, stemelbow said:

It doesn't eliminate race as a factor at all. 

No?  How does "no correlation" not eliminate race as a factor?

[stemelbow]

27 minutes ago, juliann said:

OMG, I'm not defending Mormons, but you are coming up with too many absolutes. Mormons made themselves an easy target but when compared to to Evangelicals, for instance, we do not have the worst record by any means. 

  I didn't say Mormons are the worst by any means.  I said that the Church as centered in Utah brings in uniqueness to the state. 

[stemelbow]

1 minute ago, pogi said:

No?  How does "no correlation" not eliminate race as a factor?

read the piece again.  It doesn't say there's no correlation.  "Marriage seems to have more of a correlation with mobility than race does. "

Which suggest race does have correlation. 

[pogi]

2 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

read the piece again.  It doesn't say there's no correlation.  "Marriage seems to have more of a correlation with mobility than race does. "

Which suggest race does have correlation. 

The actual study (not the author's interpretation which you quote) actually says "no correlation".

Quote

“Parents’ marital status does not matter purely through its effects at the individual level,” they write. “Children of married parents also have higher rates of upward mobility in communities with fewer single parents. Interestingly, we find no correlation between racial shares and upward mobility once we control for the fraction of single parents in an area.”

 

[snowflake]

Economists Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins famously estimated that we could reduce poverty by 71 percent if the poor did just four things: finished high school, worked full time, got married and had no more than two children — and the number of children was the least important factor in that calculation.

I absolutely applaud the LDS church for nailing the first 3 from the list above. The LDS church teaches personal responsibility, hard work,  getting married and kids after marriage. God's plan for a productive and successful life!

[clarkgoble]

35 minutes ago, snowflake said:

Economists Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins famously estimated that we could reduce poverty by 71 percent if the poor did just four things: finished high school, worked full time, got married and had no more than two children — and the number of children was the least important factor in that calculation.

Yes, and as I mentioned that's bunk as it confuses causation with correlation. i.e. the people who don't finish school likely have other characteristics beyond school that are what have the causal effect. Ditto with marriage. Simply taking your typical poor person getting them married, giving them a GED, and a job likely doesn't change the habits and other issues keeping them in poverty. Maybe they'll help a bit (especially the job part) but it may well be that the poor impulse control, social ties, and lack of conscientiousness will lead them to divorce & lose their job. 

There's a fair bit of work on this that goes against Sawhill and Haskin's quip.

[rongo]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

So, even taking into consideration the larger student population, Utah could be doing better.

Calm:

I also get the impression that the rule makers think getting better tech in the classes somehow solves all the problems.

Complaining about education spending and teacher salaries drives me nuts --- and I say that as a public school teacher of 14 years in the near-the-bottom state of Arizona (and as the sole bread-winner for a family of six). Politicians, parents, and communities are constantly beating the drum for "more money for schools/teachers!" and I tell anyone who asks for my views that money has absolutely nothing to do with achievement, school climate/conditions, etc. My state, or Utah, could spend $50,000 per student and increase teacher salaries to $100,000, and things would remain just as they are now. More money does not equal "better." The key is the home life of the students (and not even "parental involvement" in school). When you look up the contact information of students, that tells the whole story. The myriad of last names of the adults (different from the student) tells you more about what the problem is than money, poverty, race, politics, etc. 

Regarding Calm's comment --- more education spending = "technology" --- and most people think more and better technology = better education. This is also absurdly naive. Good homes and good teachers will crush oodles of money and technology any day of the week. *That* is what the problem is in education. 

[/soapbox]

[clarkgoble]

23 minutes ago, rongo said:

Complaining about education spending and teacher salaries drives me nuts

Class size does matter. To reduce class size you need more teachers. To hire more teachers you need more money. Likewise having teacher's aids helps tremendously especially when there are struggling students in the class. This lets the teacher focus more on the general student rather than having their time monopolized by the problem students. In turn that helps students with learning disabilities or behavioral issues to do better and interfere with the learning of other students less.

I don't want to say poor teachers aren't a big issue. But then of course when teaching pays so little you're less apt to attract good teachers to your state. It has worked in Utah, I think, due to a certain sexism here regarding jobs. There's an expectation that one can pay women less. Since many if not most teachers are women, the job isn't accorded the same respect. Likewise the perception is that the job is an adjunct to the person with the real job: the husband. While I recognize not everyone adopts that sexist attitude I've heard enough people outright express it that I think it's a big problem in Utah. At least as big a problem as allocating enough resources to schools.

Certainly money doesn't solve all problems. However it seems odd to think that you'd attract the same caliber of teacher when your salaries are among the lowest in the country.

Now that said, people definitely expect too much from school and teachers. They simply can't make up for a chaotic home life - which is what many people expect them to do. That doesn't mean that school can't be improved over where it is. And those improvements cost money.

An other way to look at the problem is that if Utah home life is so great, why don't Utah students score better in standardized tests? Why doesn't Utah with its great home life do at least as good as Massachusetts?

Edited March 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Ahab]

48 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Class size does matter. To reduce class size you need more teachers. To hire more teachers you need more money. Likewise having teacher's aids helps tremendously especially when there are struggling students in the class. This lets the teacher focus more on the general student rather than having their time monopolized by the problem students.

Yes, and the best students in each class can become the teacher's aids for that class. 

Better management. Less talk of money.

[juliann]

For comparison,  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-cost-of-segregation-met-20170327-story.html

Quote

 

The Chicago region's deeply entrenched patterns of segregation extract a steep price in lost lives and unrealized economic growth, according to a study to be unveiled Tuesday.

The seven-county area's murder rate could be cut by 30 percent, its economy could churn out an additional $8 billion in goods and services and its African-American residents could earn another $3,000 a year if it could reduce racial and economic segregation to the median level for the nation's largest metro areas.

 

 

[BlueDreams]

3 hours ago, rongo said:

What's frustrating for me is that it seems to be impossible to free ourselves from this charge of racism from certain people. What, exactly, can Church members/the Church/Utah members do that will ever get this monkey off of our back, in your view? I lived in Utah for about 6 years, and in my experience, the vast majority of Utah people in general, and Mormons in particular, are accepting and friendly towards other races. It seems to me to be more of a canard than anything. When I used to work at Motorola a long time ago, a black co-worker was asking questions about the Church, and he commented that there were so few black members of the Church. I smiled, and told him that we would *love* to have many more. Our struggles attracting black investigators and converts are at least as much due to unfounded cultural perceptions from the black community as they can rightly be laid at the feet of Mormons or the Church. This is frustrating to me.

I wouldn't call all of them unfounded. Black growth in Africa is high but in the US notsomuch. And IMHO this in part has to do with a bit of cultural dissonnance. Our services are very white. I don't mean just in demographics but in cultural assumptions of what worship even looks like, what's acceptable to do during, etc. Once in a blue moon I go to Genesis in Utah where the differences become pretty stark pretty fast. At times, for the people I've invited, it's just too much and can become overwhelming. Meanwhile my non-mormon Nigerian step-father looked like he was in a candy shop. He very quickly loved it. Already black folks in UT are asked to fairly consistently live in a place where most of the people see the world and experiences very very differently. So I can't blame them for being reticent for not wanting to do so also on Sunday for their day of rest. But there are still problems in perceptions. I saw that on my mission, particularly when I had another minority as my companion in an area with a heavy black population. Both black members and potential investigators were more likely to talk about race when that happened. And a few times people on the street would state that they thought it was a white church or (sometimes) a racist church. Mostly just white church. The member, who was very vocal, discussed upfront about the differing dynamics. There was one time that race issues of the black family nearly railroaded one woman's baptism....but to be fair, her family were taught by missionaries in the 70's and what they were taught was definitely racist. So they had pretty good reason to not want this for their daughter. 

Beyond that, in UT specifically, people are generally friendly even accepting. But they can be fairly ignorant at times because of their lack of exposure and can say and do things that are also just not acceptable. And yes, sometimes things that veer on racism to one degree or another. That said, UT simply has a unique flavor to racism....they're not inherently more or less racist than other areas of the country. I do think, in that way, UT and UT church members racial issues are pretty overblown.

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Sure Utah is different in this regard.  Afterall Utah houses the center of Mormonism which religion had the racist teaching of denying a race priesthood and temple ordinances.  That gives Utah it's distinction when it comes to race. 

Or basic historical migration patterns. Utah fits the racial demographics for the region, not just the state. According to wikipedia, UT has 1.6% black/african american, colorado 2.3%, Wyoming, 1.6, and Idaho 0.6%. The mountain west isn't known in general to be a hub for African-Americans or other black immigrant groups....all of which are more likely to be around a coast, major city, or the south. 

Utah's not perfect, but the assumptions and reasons are probably not as highly tied to race relations as you're ascribing. I'm not saying its not at all correlated. Just not as strongly as some of your statements raise.

 

With luv,

BD

[The Nehor]

7 hours ago, pogi said:

Right, that is why it might be effective to invest in promoting stronger marriages (not just getting hitched).  We are socially different in Utah, and that does matter - but these are social/marriage skills that can be learned.  There is so much evidence to show how strong marriages and family life can positively effect a child's long-term outlook.  There is also tons of evidence on the negative effects of single parent homes/divorced families on a child's long-term outlook.  The emotional impacts and increased stresses can negatively affect children's performance at school and life.  Without a strong home foundation, the best education may have little impact.  With a strong home foundation on the other hand, even the worst education in the country can have much impact.  This is what the evidence seems to suggest from the article anyway.

I am not convinced that this is a skill problem. I think it is more a character one. I have seen a lot of bad relationships and while a few are lopsided in many cases they are two terrible people who deserve each other. You hear them complain that they deserve better and I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying: "You really don't."

I do not know how to improve character though. If I did I would not be such a snide jerk.  

[sunstoned]

8 hours ago, rongo said:

None of the critics of the Church's past are sure what to say. They complain easily about what the Church has said (e.g., the essay), but aren't really a well of ideas as far as what else the Church should say and do. Other than what it does is bad . . .

 

 

Setting aside that I reject this, and accepting it for the sake of argument: therefore, what? What should the Church do about it? Can the Church do anything that will move the needle one iota? Can the Church do anything at all that will "shed" the racist label?

I'm not convinced that it can (in the eyes of critics), and I'm not convinced that they want the Church to be able to. No matter what it does.

 

 

What effects, specifically are still felt in the Church because of old-timers who are still influenced by past doctrine and policy? I think it's easy to say this, but hard to actually demonstrate this.

 

 

I think this is at the heart for people critical of the Church over this. They are furious at the Church and/or God for the policy's existence, and no amount of "corrective action" or change will heal this hurt. And to some extent it is the hypochondriac's hurt: the critics want to remain angry at the Church/God, and want to be able to complain about this indefinitely.

I associate with many former members, and none of them are angry, let alone furious.  

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Sure Utah is different in this regard.  Afterall Utah houses the center of Mormonism which religion had the racist teaching of denying a race priesthood and temple ordinances.  That gives Utah it's distinction when it comes to race. 

Yeh, and that makes some people assume that the Klan had strong chapters in Utah, and that lynch law and Jim Crow were the order of the day, when just the opposite was the case.  It took other groups much longer to undo the damage they had done than the Mormons. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, did not apologize for their racist teachings and actions until 1995.

Presentism seems to cause condemnation of what was unfortunately all too common in this country, and then to make it out to have been worse than it in fact was among the Mormons.  That does not excuse racism, but it does put it in perspective.

[strappinglad]

I wonder if it is even possible for Blacks , Hispanics, or Asians  to be racist, or is it the exclusive territory of ' white folks ' ? After all, white folks are equal opportunity discriminators. They hated the Irish , the Germans, the Poles, which are all white. They even hated, and still hate the Jews, who are whitish. Sorry, but being racist is part of the human condition. There must always be an " us " and a " them " , opposition in all things you know. It's just another one of those nasty natural man things that we are to strive to overcome.

  I watched an interesting program the other day on which a gentleman told a story of being in New Mexico and getting approached by a cop who happened to be LDS. Long story short, he said , and I will try to quote accurately, " you know those Mormons, despite their crazy beliefs, are really the nicest people you will ever meet ."   I have found that to be generally true despite our provincialness  , we are quite a welcoming bunch. That is not to say that we could not take a lesson on chapel singing from our Southern Black church counterparts. Praise the Lord!

[stemelbow]

9 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Or basic historical migration patterns. Utah fits the racial demographics for the region, not just the state. According to wikipedia, UT has 1.6% black/african american, colorado 2.3%, Wyoming, 1.6, and Idaho 0.6%. The mountain west isn't known in general to be a hub for African-Americans or other black immigrant groups....all of which are more likely to be around a coast, major city, or the south. 

Utah's not perfect, but the assumptions and reasons are probably not as highly tied to race relations as you're ascribing. I'm not saying its not at all correlated. Just not as strongly as some of your statements raise.

 

With luv,

BD

Hi BlueDreams.  I didn't say anything regarding the racial distribution of the state or states adjacent to it  on this point, for the record.  I agree, in terms of racial diversity, Utah is pretty close to like adjacent states to some degree or another.  But that really is beside my point.  Utah still houses the homebase of the Church, and carries within the state the largest percentage of LDS of any other state, with some areas in Utah being near 100% LDS, and the Church as it turns out, preached a racist doctrine for most of it's existence (early 1850s to 1978 is near 130 years of the soon to be, next week in fact, 187th year of the Church's existence).  Thus, Utah is unique in terms of racial issues.  Hope this helps.

[stemelbow]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yeh, and that makes some people assume that the Klan had strong chapters in Utah, and that lynch law and Jim Crow were the order of the day, when just the opposite was the case.  It took other groups much longer to undo the damage they had done than the Mormons. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, did not apologize for their racist teachings and actions until 1995.

Presentism seems to cause condemnation of what was unfortunately all too common in this country, and then to make it out to have been worse than it in fact was among the Mormons.  That does not excuse racism, but it does put it in perspective.

Yes, there certainly are and have been misperceptions out there and will continue to be.  Thanks for saying so. 

[stemelbow]

16 hours ago, pogi said:

The actual study (not the author's interpretation which you quote) actually says "no correlation".

 

Sure if you append the condition on it, there is no correlation, we are told.  But keep in mind that does not say there is no correlation overall. 

[clarkgoble]

14 hours ago, Ahab said:

Yes, and the best students in each class can become the teacher's aids for that class. 

Better management. Less talk of money.

Doesn't really work for elementary or junior high.

[rodheadlee]

21 hours ago, stemelbow said:

I think it might be because it is listed as a cause and we don't know which is the leading cause.  The leading cause may well be something else too.  But I will add racism is ugly and I'd agree with the article a big part of why Utah is less racially diverse is the Church's past racism.  It's sad that she notes, "When the poor people are, by and large, the same race as the richer ones, people find it easier to talk about them the way they might talk about, well, family members — as folks who may have made some mistakes and started with some disadvantages, but also as folks who could be self-sufficient after a little help from an uncle or a sister. It’s a very different conversation from “victim”/“oppressor” and “us”/“them”: a conversation that recognizes that poor people often make choices that keep them in poverty, but also that the constraints of poverty, including the social environment of poor neighborhoods, make it very difficult to make another choice." 

I think it's at least partially true.  And it's sad Utah's past racism is a cause to it being in the lead here. 

Well if you want to do your part, pack your stuff and move to Stockton,CA.

[clarkgoble]

8 hours ago, strappinglad said:

I wonder if it is even possible for Blacks , Hispanics, or Asians  to be racist, or is it the exclusive territory of ' white folks ' ?

It depends upon the definition you use. In the classic sense of course they can. However many people the past decade or two have redefined racism to be related to power so that it's powerful groups doing things that structurally hurt the weaker race more. I'm not sure I buy that use, although I get the reasons for it. You then end up with issues of "who is less powerful" when you deal with say Black v Korean racism in some cities.