In short: There is an implication in the Coleman essay that African Americans have less wealth because they spend more.
Problem with that:
1. While black people spend more on these items than white people, white people spend correspondingly more on other luxury goods.
2. Quote: "[...] once income is controlled, if anything, black families actually have a slightly higher savings rate than their white counterparts. [...] If anything, it appears that blacks generally live more frugal lives than whites; a study conducted by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy using the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances found that, at comparable levels of income, whites spend 1.3 times more than blacks (Traub et al.)"
So, yeah, the entire argument depends on a cherry-picked metric (we're leaving aside the question to what extent cars and clothing are necessarily Veblen goods and to what extent differences in types of spending are the result of different social constraints and incentives [2]) that does not reflect actual spending and saving habits well.
What Quillette essentially is: a Gish Gallop [3] in webzine form. Debunking all this takes time and effort and few people have the spare time to keep up with their output, and even then the debunking is often not seen by the original readers.
[2] For example, the problem that it can be more important for a black person to appear well-dressed to compensate for racial bias than for a white person.
In short: There is an implication in the Coleman essay that African Americans have less wealth because they spend more.
Problem with that:
1. While black people spend more on these items than white people, white people spend correspondingly more on other luxury goods.
2. Quote: "[...] once income is controlled, if anything, black families actually have a slightly higher savings rate than their white counterparts. [...] If anything, it appears that blacks generally live more frugal lives than whites; a study conducted by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy using the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances found that, at comparable levels of income, whites spend 1.3 times more than blacks (Traub et al.)"
So, yeah, the entire argument depends on a cherry-picked metric (we're leaving aside the question to what extent cars and clothing are necessarily Veblen goods and to what extent differences in types of spending are the result of different social constraints and incentives [2]) that does not reflect actual spending and saving habits well.
What Quillette essentially is: a Gish Gallop [3] in webzine form. Debunking all this takes time and effort and few people have the spare time to keep up with their output, and even then the debunking is often not seen by the original readers.
[1] https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21121635...
[2] For example, the problem that it can be more important for a black person to appear well-dressed to compensate for racial bias than for a white person.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop