Before the left racialized it for political purposes culture actually used to be the politically correct explanation, because it's something that can theoretically be fixed. That justified dumping money into a bottomless pit as leftists are fond of doing. It also meant the discussion about IQ can be avoided, which suited everyone on the political spectrum due to some inconvenient truths about the different IQ distributions of racial groups such a discussion would bring to light. This is actually an example of political correctness causing direct harm. An honest discussion about IQ and its link to various measures of success (including economic) might lead to practical solutions like cutting off the infinite supply of low skilled labor to give people on the left side of the bell curve a chance to make a decent living. But that cuts into corporate profits, so the wokists aren't alone in pushing open borders. Big business's push for unlimited immigration isn't just due to woke infiltration. Their desire for an infinite supply of disposable labor they can pay peanuts is also a factor.

Why are they attacking him? What truth is he pointing out?

Most poverty arises in the first instance from poor adults not working or from having children outside marriage and then failing to support them—but what explains these patterns? Policymakers continue to invent new programs to help poor families and entice more adults to work, but the positive effects are small at best. Why the needy often lead unproductive lives even when opportunity beckons, and even when help is offered, remains deeply mysterious.

Many experts also thought that “social barriers” of some impersonal kind were preventing adults from working—such as racial bias, absence of skills or child care, and so on. But no such clear impediment has been found. True, government benefits can raise income among the poor or help them cope—but none causes them to do much more to help themselves. External impediments are not their main problem.2

Today, the seriously poor are mostly blacks and Hispanics, and the main reason is cultural difference. The great fact is that these groups did not come from Europe. Fifty years after civil rights, their main problem is no longer racial discrimination by white people but rather that they face an individualist culture that they are unprepared for. Their native stance toward life is much more passive than the American norm. In America, they face less hardship than they did where they came from, but also more competition. They now must strive to get ahead in school and the workplace while avoiding crime and personal problems. They also must take much more responsibility for themselves than they did before. In short, they have to become more individualist before they can “make it” in America. They are thus at a disadvantage competing with the European groups—even if they face no mistreatment on racial grounds.

It seems so mild. But he is obviously very fragile…

Editor’s note: this article was originally published in SOCIETY: Social Science and Modern Society (July 21, 2020) under the same title. It was retracted on July 21, 2020 by the publisher Springer under pressure from activists, advocates, and scholars who believe, apparently, that examining cultural habits, beliefs, and attitudes as it relates to the socio-economic mobility of various groups is racist. Despite decades of research by renowned scholars as different in their political viewpoints as Nathan Glazer and Oscar Lewis indicating that all groups that have joined America’s expansive middle-class have assimilated, to one degree or another, certain cultural traits, one petition by the aggrieved professors excoriates Mead for perpetuating “the racist ideology of assimilation.”--- Retracted due to pressure. These people are a cancer to the societies they inhabit, inhibiting study and advancement. Cute now how they don't want to assimilate anymore. There is no us. We will balkanize. Already plenty of White Flight after the riots and Cali craziness.