Laziness and job status among blacks

In his book White Guilt, Shelby Steele argues that few blacks excel in high status jobs because they lack the required skills. From childhood they are told that failure is not their fault, so they never learn that they are responsible for their lack of skills. While other people are working hard to become competent to avoid feeling like failures, blacks don't fear failure; after all, it's not their doing, it's the system.

GSS data can give us some idea if a work ethic among blacks is as important as Steele thinks. Respondents were asked:  "To what extent do you agree or disagree that you see yourself as someone who tends to be lazy." Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree" (5). I calculated the means for those with low job prestige and those with high prestige. The mean work ethic score is 4.19 for the low-status group (n = 115) and 4.03 for the high-status group (n = 66). The two means are not signficantly different. According to these data, higher class blacks are no more hard working than their lower class counterparts. (The means indicate a bias toward thinking that one is not lazy, but this is not really a problem when comparing the two groups unless the bias is systematically stronger in one group than the other.)

What ever happened to John Henry?  When you think of a really hardworking NAM, who comes to mind?  I've been conditioned to imagine a Mexican guy who earns minimum wage but works two or three jobs in order to put food on the table. 

The Gambling Impact and Behavior Study asked 1,440 men ages 30-64 about their work status. Here are the percent who reported working a full-time job and a second job. 

Percent with second job--males

Non-Hispanic whites 4.7

Non-Hispanic blacks 10.2

Non-Hispanic others 3.9

Hispanics 4.6

The stereotype should be of the hardworking black man.  Along with Hispanics, whites and others--mostly Asians--have low numbers, but this is due to the fact that members of these groups are more likely to have a really good job that obviates the need for two. 

And for women:

Percent with second job--females

Non-Hispanic whites 3.8

Non-Hispanic blacks 4.9

Non-Hispanic others 1.8

Hispanics 2.4

Same thing. 

Now, don't get me wrong. Blacks have higher unemployment numbers, but the focus in this post is on the high end:

Percent unemployed or not in the labor force--males aged 30-64

Non-Hispanic whites 15.6

Non-Hispanic blacks 21.9

Non-Hispanic others 18.0

Hispanics 11.3

Fat and happy

Males, N = 410

Females, N = 439

Males, N = 430

Females, N = 485


The Steveosphere has been chatting about fat, so I thought I'd chime in. There are two ideas I wanted to test: 1) that fatter people are happier; and 2) that they're lazier.

General Social Survey interviewers looked over respondents and recorded whether they thought they were below average, average, above average, or considerably above average weight. I omitted non-whites since their numbers were too small.

The top two graphs show how happiness varies with weight. Among men, the skinny ones are not as happy. Men of average weight are happiest, but the fatties are pretty close.

Among women, the trend is clearer: the fatter, the happier.

Now, on the laziness question, I picked work status for people from the age of 30-55. (Next time, I might look at other indicators).

Looking at the third graph, the skinny guys are least likely to be working full-time; the really fat dudes are second.

Once again, weight is more important for women. As the rotundness increases, so do the hours at work. Notice how the skinnies have the most homemakers. They probably used their thinness to bag them a productive husband. (Lots of thin part-timers too).

So, the data here do not support the idea that fat people are lazy and miserable. Perhaps happy people worry less about their weight. The world is a good place whether I'm narrow or wide.

What's up with thin men? Not happy because they're too slight--a feminine quality? More neurotic?

I imagine that more fat women need to work because they don't have a man to support them, or because they must bring more income to the marriage bargain to compensate for being unattractive. Or they're just lower-income types and need the money more.

Lazy Americans? The open borders crowd gleefully tell us how much immigrants inject energy into an otherwise lazy America. Well, I looked at data from the California Workforce Survey to see who does the most overtime. Respondents (N=868) were asked how often they worked more than 40 hours a week. Here are the percentages who said "usually" by racial/ethnic group:


Percent who usually work overtime

White 31.2
Black 22.4
American-born Hispanic 24.2
Immigrant Hispanic 26.2

Those fat, lazy white people might be fat, but they ain't lazy.