An Algorithm of Success: Understanding Black America

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An Algorithm of Success: Understanding Black America, John Sibley Butler

Education and entrepreneurship are the algorithm of success for minorities.  Market economies are key.

"Understanding the success model of America means understanding differences between segregation, homophily and different modes of adjustment to America, one of the greatest market economies that ever existed. We have over 150 years of data to help us understand strategies that lead to success in America under all kinds of circumstances.

"So what is it that leads to success?

"If we were to create a learning algorithm for group success, and indeed non-success, through the generations, we start with how groups enter market economies, either with an emphasis on wage labor or as entrepreneurs. The algorithm would tell us that, in the aggregate, those groups that entered by putting self-employment at its very center, and also created educational structures for success, have much better outcomes than those who joined the workforce as laborers without creating institutional structures. In a real sense, America is the story of how different racial and religious groups (and combinations of both) come together and place entrepreneurship at the center of the community. When this is done voluntarily, sociologists call it 'homophily,' often defined as 'birds of a feather flock together.'"

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