In modern times, the sudden bursting of the Scots upon the world scene as leading figures in a variety of fields of endeavor in the eighteenth century, after having been on the backward fringes of European civilization for many centuries, illustrates the power of cultural development. The similarly meteoric rise of Japan to the economic and technological forefront in just one century likewise shows the power of the acquisition of a new cultural capital, even in a country lacking most of the natural resources required for the spontaneous internal generation of modern industry. Whatever heartening implications such historic developments may have for the hidden potential of peoples, the implication must also be faced that that potential can remain hidden for a very long time, with very serious consequences. Widely varying amounts and kinds of cultural capital make economic and social disparities among groups and nations virtually inevitable. Yet the political temptation is to overlook the causal influences of differences in cultural capital, which often go far back into history, and, instead, to attribute these disparities to current failures of society.
Black unemployment is twice that of whites.
The infant mortality rate in many black communities is equal to that of many third world nations. The statistics for housing, crime and education deliver a tragic statement of despair and inequality. Yet, in polls, more than 60 percent of whites say blacks now have equal opportunity. The very possibility that these disparities might be due to cultural differences affecting behavior and attitudes, or to differences in the human capital brought into the workplace, rather than to the behavior of the larger society, received no attention whatever, either in this statement or in much of the media or the academic world. Yet, when all this was being said, black American married couples with college degrees were at the same income level as white American married couples with college degrees.