The concept of "race" or "ethnicity" or whatever you wanna call it is all the same: people who look alike (or talk alike or whatever) are lumped together.
I don't know what to say other than I disagree that it is all the same thing. When someone says race they don't just mean people grouped together. The concept is more complex than that.
I think I have adequately addressed all of your criticism in my last post.
I don't see you addressing it anywhere. Could you point it out?
"Race" or "Ethnicity" or whatever is just a way of grouping people with similar characteristics. These groupings then have placed upon them certain ideas or prejudices or whatever.
The impetus to group people together like that is something you can't eliminate. And it's harmless so long as you can reinforce the idea that those groupings don't mean anything beyond the grouping itself.
Affirmative action-esque redress is at best a flawed and short-lived solution, though. It's incredibly difficult to measure out who deserves what and how unjust things are, and in it's implementation that kind of policy often benefits people who were never even indirectly held back by racial/gender discrimination, often at a loss to individuals who may have been more substantively disadvantaged to begin with. While nobody can really say whether or not this is the case X times out of Y, it doesn't even matter, because the policy is dead on arrival for other reasons.
There's some quotation out there that roughly describes affirmative action as 'benign racism' in an attempt to solve 'malignant racism.' I think this is accurate, and strikes at the main issue with racial-based policy - you attempt to correct one racial injustice by inflicting another! The policy undermines the kind of social change that is part of the real progress against racism. Instead of group A resenting group B for past injustices, group B learns to resent group A or whatever institution is responsible for present ones.
There are some seriously real, systemic failures that affect the success of minority groups, and they deserve to be recognized and addressed; but the answer isn't more racial handicaps. That doesn't move us toward a society where race is less and less relevant to one's quality of life, it mires us further.
I could make a longwinded response to this but instead I will just post this comic
I would have preferred a longwinded response, because that comic is really just a simple minded way of calling me a hypocritical racist and not owning up to any of the flaws with affirmative action.
It's not even that it's the best way we know to help account for the effects of past racism in this country. More attention to the systemic problems that hold people back in very real ways today (inner city crime, ineffective schools, neighborhoods and groups of people marginalized by their own cities) would be a superior, long-lasting approach that directly targets those affected - not just looking at race on a job or school application and making a decision directly based on race.
I'm not saying that everybody in this country can just bootstrap their way to wherever they want. That's delusional and naive, and actually sort of a racist attitude because of the realities it ignores.
The problem is that the systemic approach is more expensive and, well, difficult. And that's not a very good reason to ignore it and make shallow, inadequate, self-defeating attempts at a solution like affirmative action. And sometimes it IS a choice between the two. People's perceptions of a political candidate's views on race are more likely to be based on some soundbite on racial policy than on their history of effectively addressing the economic/educational effects of racism on cities and people.
But no, I'm a dumb racist because I don't like policy that stalls progress against racism, is specifically designed to be temporary, and whose effectiveness is incredibly questionable. It's that kind of reactionary dismissal that hurts this kind of discourse in places where it could actually make a difference.
I don't believe I have called you a racist, so you can get off that. The comic is a succinct way of addressing the problem with your argument about color-consciousness: we will consistently fail to solve the problems created by racism unless we acknowledge it for what it is and address it. Poverty is a problem. And although the two often go hand in hand, racism is a different problem that demands it's own solutions.
Blacks don't get longer prison sentences than whites for the same crimes because they're poor. They don't get quoted higher prices for housing because they're poor. You are saying that we need to solve poverty-related problems without giving the slightest consideration to the fact that the poor groups you are trying to help are poor as a direct result of systematic racism that, while not as pervasive as in years past, is still very much with us.
You did not call me a racist, you only showed off a comic with a white guy who is, like me, against affirmative action climbing over a shackled black man and then failing to help him get up.
I'm saying that addressing the poverty issues is also addressing the racial aspect. The government doesn't really get anywhere by asking people to stop being racist. It can however function to enable groups and areas now stricken with poverty and lack of access to proper health care / education / etc. to better acquire the things that have been denied to them on account of race. Or there can be tougher punishment for people that discriminate in employment / housing / education. I understand going after the 'root cause' of all of this, but there are minorities generations deep in poverty, violence, and lack of education right now. If everyone woke up tomorrow with absolutely no racist views in their hearts and minds, what good is that to those who are already suffering the consequences?
What consideration do you want me to give to race in this matter? It's obvious that the current state of affairs is a result of repugnant discrimination, but you can't easily change the way people think by asking them to. The government can't directly affect social change, but it can usher in an environment where positive social change is going to result naturally. This is done by people simply living alongside each other over time. You fix society by fixing everything else, not the other way around.
The concept of "race" or "ethnicity" or whatever you wanna call it is all the same: people who look alike (or talk alike or whatever) are lumped together.
I don't know what to say other than I disagree that it is all the same thing. When someone says race they don't just mean people grouped together. The concept is more complex than that.
I think I have adequately addressed all of your criticism in my last post.
I don't see you addressing it anywhere. Could you point it out?
"Race" or "Ethnicity" or whatever is just a way of grouping people with similar characteristics. These groupings then have placed upon them certain ideas or prejudices or whatever.
The impetus to group people together like that is something you can't eliminate. And it's harmless so long as you can reinforce the idea that those groupings don't mean anything beyond the grouping itself.
Yeah, that's generally my opinion as well. The instinct to create a group is strong enough that it's silly to tell people they're bad if they notice and categorize differences.
It makes no sense to tell people to be color-blind in the actual, literal, Stephen Colbert sense. What does make sense is saying "yes, you're going to group people according to traits. But you're going to be wrong basically all the time, because human beings are complicated enough that gross physical characteristics or ethnicity aren't really a good predictor of behavior, personality, or ability".
Saying "stop noticing that someone's skin color is different" makes everyone feel racist, and then also makes everyone think "well shit, if racism is just noticing something maybe these liberal namby-pambies are just being jerks and maybe there is no racism and just whining because man I feel put upon. Maybe they're racist... against me?"
I mean remember that godawful study a while ago about how children gasp were shown to group different ethnicities of people differently via I don't know some BS methodology. But the point is people were like "oh my god! babies can be racist?" and that's just a massive misunderstanding. A fucking baby grouping things into "mom/dad looking" and "not mom/dad looking" by various characteristics isn't being racist, it's just being a little dumb person. You can teach kids not to think that because someone looks like X they must then be Y.
I think one of the problems with "pretending that race doesn't exist" is that it usually means "forcing everyone to adhere to the cultural norms of the dominant population." In the U.S. that would mean, "Come on guys, stop acting so black/latino/asian, act like an Amuricahn!"
Getting rid of racism means leaving room for people to wear their cultural and ethnic backgrounds proudly, without putting down those of others.
I think one of the problems with "pretending that race doesn't exist" is that it usually means "forcing everyone to adhere to the cultural norms of the dominant population." In the U.S. that would mean, "Come on guys, stop acting so black/latino/asian, act like an Amuricahn!"
Getting rid of racism means leaving room for people to wear their cultural and ethnic backgrounds proudly, without putting down those of others.
Or one try getting rid of nationalism/patriotism in the same move, hopefully removing all the narrow cultural norms/stereotypes and instead emphasize individualism/individualist expression of oneself.
When that happens, acting black/latino/asian is to act like an american.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I think one of the problems with "pretending that race doesn't exist" is that it usually means "forcing everyone to adhere to the cultural norms of the dominant population." In the U.S. that would mean, "Come on guys, stop acting so black/latino/asian, act like an Amuricahn!"
Getting rid of racism means leaving room for people to wear their cultural and ethnic backgrounds proudly, without putting down those of others.
I'm saying that addressing the poverty issues is also addressing the racial aspect. The government doesn't really get anywhere by asking people to stop being racist. It can however function to enable groups and areas now stricken with poverty and lack of access to proper health care / education / etc. to better acquire the things that have been denied to them on account of race. Or there can be tougher punishment for people that discriminate in employment / housing / education. I understand going after the 'root cause' of all of this, but there are minorities generations deep in poverty, violence, and lack of education right now. If everyone woke up tomorrow with absolutely no racist views in their hearts and minds, what good is that to those who are already suffering the consequences?
What consideration do you want me to give to race in this matter? It's obvious that the current state of affairs is a result of repugnant discrimination, but you can't easily change the way people think by asking them to. The government can't directly affect social change, but it can usher in an environment where positive social change is going to result naturally. This is done by people simply living alongside each other over time. You fix society by fixing everything else, not the other way around.
So, wait a minute. The government can't effect social attitudes WRT racism, but if it ceases to adopt policy that addresses racial inequality, people will stop being racist?
I honestly don't really care whether the government can "change the way people think." I do think the government should adopt policy that helps minority groups overcome discrimination, including affirmative action. There may be a glorious future in which racial discrimination doesn't affect society to the degree that it does today, but it isn't fair to people living right now to say that they should just deal with the consequences of that racism because addressing it makes us uncomfortable.
Also, I think the idea that the government can't affect social change via policy is fucking ridiculous.
ed: I mean, it took the government forcibly integrating the military, schools, and various other institutions for people to admit or realize that integration wasn't the end of the world. That shit didn't happen naturally as a result of people living together, because people weren't living together until the government told them they couldn't segregate anymore.
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I'm saying that addressing the poverty issues is also addressing the racial aspect. The government doesn't really get anywhere by asking people to stop being racist. It can however function to enable groups and areas now stricken with poverty and lack of access to proper health care / education / etc. to better acquire the things that have been denied to them on account of race. Or there can be tougher punishment for people that discriminate in employment / housing / education. I understand going after the 'root cause' of all of this, but there are minorities generations deep in poverty, violence, and lack of education right now. If everyone woke up tomorrow with absolutely no racist views in their hearts and minds, what good is that to those who are already suffering the consequences?
What consideration do you want me to give to race in this matter? It's obvious that the current state of affairs is a result of repugnant discrimination, but you can't easily change the way people think by asking them to. The government can't directly affect social change, but it can usher in an environment where positive social change is going to result naturally. This is done by people simply living alongside each other over time. You fix society by fixing everything else, not the other way around.
So, wait a minute. The government can't effect social attitudes WRT racism, but if it ceases to adopt policy that addresses racial inequality, people will stop being racist?
I honestly don't really care whether the government can "change the way people think." I do think the government should adopt policy that helps minority groups overcome discrimination, including affirmative action. There may be a glorious future in which racial discrimination doesn't affect society to the degree that it does today, but it isn't fair to people living right now to say that they should just deal with the consequences of that racism because addressing it makes us uncomfortable.
Also, I think the idea that the government can't affect social change via policy is fucking ridiculous.
ed: I mean, it took the government forcibly integrating the military, schools, and various other institutions for people to admit or realize that integration wasn't the end of the world. That shit didn't happen naturally as a result of people living together, because people weren't living together until the government told them they couldn't segregate anymore.
As to your first question, that's a no, but only because I disagree with the claim that affirmative action actually addresses racial inequality. It's intensely problematic on many levels - conceptually (racism to make up for past racism), socially (points I made earlier about breeding divisive resentment), and in it's implementation (it is designed to assign benefits based on race alone, and not say, race & economic situation, like first generation college students). That and the focus is actually far too narrow - it becomes a cheap political stance that draws attention and political capital away from substantive change, yielding no discernible results. I don't just think that affirmative action fails to work, I think that it fails to work in addition to undermining the greater goal of ending racism (for reasons stated above). At best it's incredibly short-sighted, prolonging racial-favoritism with a policy of...racial favoritism.
I do not think you read my post carefully enough, because my position here is that the government can only indirectly affect social change, which is why I disagree with your notion that the gov. can succeed on the approach that targets racism directly. They absolutely should criminalize racial discrimination, but my point is that the problem has gone so far beyond present-day discrimination (which does happen and should not be ignored) that I believe an emphasis on the institutional problems (quality and availability of education, health care, social services, legal representation, etc.) would treat both the cause and the symptoms better than anything else.
Well, I do feel that too many people accept race as a static "thing" that applies to people. "Of COURSE that person is black/white/Asian and of COURSE it is natural to notice that!" As Casual Eddy pointed out, it also used to be "natural" to separate out the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, or whatever other group wasn't WASPy enough. There have been a lot of ways of categorizing that people thought were natural or inevitable, that proved not to be.
The thing is, socially there IS such a thing as race right now. Someone whose skin is black does have a different experience than someone whose skin is white in America. It makes it rather hard to talk about those experiences if we don't acknowledge race. It also makes it a lot easier to ignore white privilege--to pretend that everyone starts out from the same place and ends up where they deserve to be (ah, that Puritan work ethic) rather than admitting, well, yes, being black does bring disadvantages like random cops assuming you're a criminal all the time.
Basically, I feel acknowledgement of race is more beneficial than not at this time, because it makes it easier for groups that look/are treated differently to communicate and understand each other.
As to your first question, that's a no, but only because I disagree with the claim that affirmative action actually addresses racial inequality. It's intensely problematic on many levels - conceptually (racism to make up for past racism), socially (points I made earlier about breeding divisive resentment), and in it's implementation (it is designed to assign benefits based on race alone, and not say, race & economic situation, like first generation college students). That and the focus is actually far too narrow - it becomes a cheap political stance that draws attention and political capital away from substantive change, yielding no discernible results. I don't just think that affirmative action fails to work, I think that it fails to work in addition to undermining the greater goal of ending racism (for reasons stated above). At best it's incredibly short-sighted, prolonging racial-favoritism with a policy of...racial favoritism.
I really think we need to go back to the cartoon:
It's important to look at everything that is happening in the strip. One of the major points that it makes is not just that blacks were kept down, but that in doing so, whites were elevated. Thus, if we were to just stop looking at race socially, the existing constructs would remain, leaving black people at a disadvantage even if there are no social barriers. So, if we actually want to make things truly equal, we can't just tackle the social issues, but the infrastructure issues. For example, it's rare for someone, once they've gotten a good start in their career, to look for a job in the classic sense - instead, networking comes much more into play. The problem is that if you're cut off from the network (where do you think we get the term "good old boys' club" from), that can basically mean that you are completely cut off from the system as well. And you can't rely on the system choosing to be more inclusive - we tried that, and as it turns out, it didn't work. So you have to force change, which is the purpose of affirmative action.
As for this breeding resentment, I liken it to the old saying "born on third base, but thought he hit a triple." We like to believe that we got where we are by our own virtues, especially in the US with our national myth of "rugged individualism". When someone points out the reality that we in fact didn't, but instead have gained our position in life through outside forces like parents, community, etc., people feel offended by this, especially when it's pointed out that some of these elements weren't exactly the most honest or noble. The thing is, this doesn't make the fact that people do benefit from external forces that grant them advantages any less true, nor does it make pointing out that some of these advantages were accrued through past injustices any less wrong. Just because some people resent that people are popping their bubble of delusion doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to correct those injustices.
As for implementation, the fact is that race can put you at a major advantage or disadvantage no matter where you fall in society. The argument that it's okay for a middle class minority to face social roadblocks in the professional sphere just because they aren't at the absolute bottom rung of society (or worse yet, that such roadblocks somehow don't exist despite evidence to the contrary) is a rather disturbing one. If we actually want to fix structural inequality, then we have to confront it where it occurs.
I do not think you read my post carefully enough, because my position here is that the government can only indirectly affect social change, which is why I disagree with your notion that the gov. can succeed on the approach that targets racism directly. They absolutely should criminalize racial discrimination, but my point is that the problem has gone so far beyond present-day discrimination (which does happen and should not be ignored) that I believe an emphasis on the institutional problems (quality and availability of education, health care, social services, legal representation, etc.) would treat both the cause and the symptoms better than anything else.
Except the institutional problems are pretty much due to racism.
You start out in 1954 by saying, "[n-word], [n-word], [n-word]." By 1968 you can't say "[n-word]" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "[n-word], [n-word]."
The cartoon is really not that accurate, as all the white people that actively enslaved black people in the USA are long dead. A lot of white people only showed up for the last panel, really.
The cartoon is really not that accurate, as all the white people that actively enslaved black people in the USA are long dead. A lot of white people only showed up for the last panel, really.
And they're reaping the benefits from the conduct of the former.
It's important to look at everything that is happening in the strip. One of the major points that it makes is not just that blacks were kept down, but that in doing so, whites were elevated. Thus, if we were to just stop looking at race socially, the existing constructs would remain, leaving black people at a disadvantage even if there are no social barriers. So, if we actually want to make things truly equal, we can't just tackle the social issues, but the infrastructure issues. For example, it's rare for someone, once they've gotten a good start in their career, to look for a job in the classic sense - instead, networking comes much more into play. The problem is that if you're cut off from the network (where do you think we get the term "good old boys' club" from), that can basically mean that you are completely cut off from the system as well. And you can't rely on the system choosing to be more inclusive - we tried that, and as it turns out, it didn't work. So you have to force change, which is the purpose of affirmative action.
In the first half here you're saying precisely what I've been saying, but again you're missing my disagreement here. I don't think we can ignore the 'infrastructure issues', and I've said several times that the social issues are difficult to affect directly. Where I disagree, is that affirmative action actually accomplishes what it sets out to do well enough to make up for the fact that you are inflicting more racial injustice.
As for this breeding resentment, I liken it to the old saying "born on third base, but thought he hit a triple." We like to believe that we got where we are by our own virtues, especially in the US with our national myth of "rugged individualism". When someone points out the reality that we in fact didn't, but instead have gained our position in life through outside forces like parents, community, etc., people feel offended by this, especially when it's pointed out that some of these elements weren't exactly the most honest or noble. The thing is, this doesn't make the fact that people do benefit from external forces that grant them advantages any less true, nor does it make pointing out that some of these advantages were accrued through past injustices any less wrong. Just because some people resent that people are popping their bubble of delusion doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to correct those injustices.
I agree with this too, we take a narrow view on our own accomplishments, and there are a million ways in which a person's success is affected throughout their life. But you're making an assumption that every white male benefited from slavery or racial preference at some point recent enough to be so relevant as to justify outright racial preference. While this is no doubt true in many cases, it certainly isn't in all - and the reverse is true for groups that were greatly discriminated against in the past. Affirmative action has no way of ensuring that the way it is supposed to work even happens, nor does it even attempt to fucking care! If you want to put it in terms of the oversimplified comic you guys love, it would be more akin to grabbing a random white guy, throwing him down in front of a random black guy, and letting the latter step on top of him to wherever he is going. Congratulations - your policy of direct institutional racism, based on racial generalizations, whose effectiveness is totally questionable, has done nothing but prolong the problem. Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]? Or that a group of firefighters will do anything except resent the fact that the new guy, while potentially less qualified, got picked because of the color of his skin? The whole policy is self-defeating on every level, including the social aims it aspires to.
As for implementation, the fact is that race can put you at a major advantage or disadvantage no matter where you fall in society. The argument that it's okay for a middle class minority to face social roadblocks in the professional sphere just because they aren't at the absolute bottom rung of society (or worse yet, that such roadblocks somehow don't exist despite evidence to the contrary) is a rather disturbing one. If we actually want to fix structural inequality, then we have to confront it where it occurs.
I don't see either of those arguments being made, but you don't think that degree of affectedness matters? Because that's disturbing to me. People starving in forgotten slums at the 'bottom rung of society' were probably more affected by racial inequality (directly and indirectly) than the middle class minority entering the rat-race of higher education. The structural inequality is happening 1000x more directly and severely in the former case, and so deserves more attention.
Except the institutional problems are pretty much due to racism.
Nobody is saying they aren't. My point is that it is superior for a myriad of reasons (mostly being that it is infinitely more within the power of the government) to go after the institutional problems.
Congratulations - your policy of direct institutional racism, based on racial generalizations, whose effectiveness is totally questionable, has done nothing but prolong the problem. Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]?
I think you are misunderstanding the policy goal of affirmative action programs.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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Congratulations - your policy of direct institutional racism, based on racial generalizations, whose effectiveness is totally questionable, has done nothing but prolong the problem. Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]?
I think you are misunderstanding the policy goal of affirmative action programs.
I think he is misunderstanding affirmative action, period.
Congratulations - your policy of direct institutional racism, based on racial generalizations, whose effectiveness is totally questionable, has done nothing but prolong the problem. Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]?
I think you are misunderstanding the policy goal of affirmative action programs.
I think he is misunderstanding affirmative action, period.
There is no misunderstanding, I am attempting to look at the implications and other effects, particularly the effects on the source of the problem to begin with. Are you taking the stance that the policy has no larger motives re: discrimination beyond the individuals it directly works for? That it has worked because an individual - with no consideration for their own affectedness by past racism other than their minority status - got that job, or got into that school? I've stated my myriad of reasons for questioning the worth of affirmative action programs. It seems to me you guys find it more justifiable because you are reasoning from the assumption that everybody who stands to benefit from the policy has suffered from past and present discrimination to a point adequate enough to justify racial discrimination that runs in the opposite direction. This seems to go into the lack of appreciation in your position for the degrees of affectedness racism has, because those most affected by past and present racism in our country are probably closer to starvation and homelessness than they are to graduate schools and higher-end jobs.
No, Saint. What we acknowledge is the fact that when it comes to the balances in our society, if you're white, there's a pretty large thumb on your pan. Again, it goes back to "born on third base but thought he hit a triple."
It's not a matter of paying for your ancestors or whatever. It's a matter of, we live in a society in which there is systematic discrimination, and we need to address that via policy.
As much as I'm in favor of programs to alleviate poverty and increase class mobility, those policies don't solve all the problems caused by systemic racism.
And unknownsaint, you seem fixated on the government's inability to change people's attitudes. Which might be true or it might not, but it isn't the point either way. The point of affirmative action is not to get people to stop being racists, it's to mitigate the effects of that racism on minority populations. Those populations are not suffering from past discrimination, they are suffering from discrimination that is happening right now and is documented in a variety of places in society, from employment to the judicial system to housing to education.
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I also strongly suspect from some of the statements in this thread that people don't understand how modern affirmative action programs are implemented. Quotas haven't been legal since the 70s.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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Just had to add, I know noone directly said "all white people are descended from slave-owners". Just comments that are probably meant to refer to the concept of privilege but the wording is ambiguous enough to suggest more than that.
Just come right out and say privilege, it's much more honest than saying "You're reaping the rewards of slavery." Which is crass, and has a lot of baggage attached to it. It also suggests that I should have inherited some sort of giant plantation or something. :rotate:
Well right, saying "you're reaping the rewards of slavery" isn't incredibly accurate and besides, the policies we're really talking about are much more recent. Into the second half of the 20th century there was all kinds of social policy in this country that denied minority populations like blacks access to education and services and otherwise denied them the ability to accumulate wealth.
Why do so many blacks live in depressed, ghettoized areas of major cities, for example? Well, probably because until the 60s they were literally barred from investing in ways that would have increased their family wealth.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited July 2011
Personally, I think that "black" and "white" as a descriptive term used to study, understand and think about prejudice is not the same as "black" and "white" used as a description of personal identity.
MF was quite obviously speaking about personal identity there. "We should not ignore Color" and the other associated arguments are falsely generalising this across to discussion of prejudice.
Seems simple to me? Not doing one doesn't threaten the other. What's the problem?
An example: I'm an individualist. I treat everyone based on their personal characteristics. Personality, actions, thoughts, ideas unique to them. I will not look at one person and claim they are the same as another person if I do not know them.
I also studied prejudice and am comfortable using the terminology to discuss prejudice, because I'm studying/discussing how people view other people on average, not how I view other people or how I should view other people. That it's normal to do a thing doesn't mean it should be so. Claiming these terms are okay to describe personal identity because that's the terminology used to study prejudice is a classic case of "that does not follow". Nor does it follow in reverse. They're separate.
Something to think about, if you do mash together personal identity descriptive terms and studying/understanding prejudice descriptive terms, this is the same "grouping" thought process that results in stereotypes in the first place. Whoops?
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
There is a lot going on in this thread and if I have time tomorrow I'll probably post something more substantial. In the meantime, I wanted to address this in particular:
Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]?
Yes, actually.
It helps to remember that a lot of racism is unconscious. Human beings tend to remember patterns - if every other professor fits a certain mold, then anybody who breaks that mold is going to seem less professor-like.
Of course, the 50 year old white professor might insist that there is no way he can possibly be racist, and he will fully believe that he is not. He may think that "racism" implies overt bias or malicious intent. But he'd be wrong. Humans are hard wired to build stereotypes and unless you are consciously making deliberate efforts to question and dismantle your own stereotypes, then your stereotypes will build up faster than they can be dispelled.
One of the purposes (though not the only purpose) of affirmative action is to make sure we don't perpetuate patterns where educaion and professionalism are associated with whiteness simply by the power of the human mind to build heuristics.
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every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Didn't Andrew Jackson beat a fellow politician with a cane?
'Cause if he's the one who did that I'm not seeing the problem here, override
Well he was also the closest thing to Hitler we've ever had in America
Honestly, he's the only president that godwins realistically apply to
Or, you know, Huey Long. Wasn't a President though.
I just am amused when people demand to be called African American, not black, as if the two are mutually exclusive. White people can be African American too. And black people can be from places other than Africa.
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I don't see you addressing it anywhere. Could you point it out?
"Race" or "Ethnicity" or whatever is just a way of grouping people with similar characteristics. These groupings then have placed upon them certain ideas or prejudices or whatever.
The impetus to group people together like that is something you can't eliminate. And it's harmless so long as you can reinforce the idea that those groupings don't mean anything beyond the grouping itself.
You did not call me a racist, you only showed off a comic with a white guy who is, like me, against affirmative action climbing over a shackled black man and then failing to help him get up.
I'm saying that addressing the poverty issues is also addressing the racial aspect. The government doesn't really get anywhere by asking people to stop being racist. It can however function to enable groups and areas now stricken with poverty and lack of access to proper health care / education / etc. to better acquire the things that have been denied to them on account of race. Or there can be tougher punishment for people that discriminate in employment / housing / education. I understand going after the 'root cause' of all of this, but there are minorities generations deep in poverty, violence, and lack of education right now. If everyone woke up tomorrow with absolutely no racist views in their hearts and minds, what good is that to those who are already suffering the consequences?
What consideration do you want me to give to race in this matter? It's obvious that the current state of affairs is a result of repugnant discrimination, but you can't easily change the way people think by asking them to. The government can't directly affect social change, but it can usher in an environment where positive social change is going to result naturally. This is done by people simply living alongside each other over time. You fix society by fixing everything else, not the other way around.
Yeah, that's generally my opinion as well. The instinct to create a group is strong enough that it's silly to tell people they're bad if they notice and categorize differences.
It makes no sense to tell people to be color-blind in the actual, literal, Stephen Colbert sense. What does make sense is saying "yes, you're going to group people according to traits. But you're going to be wrong basically all the time, because human beings are complicated enough that gross physical characteristics or ethnicity aren't really a good predictor of behavior, personality, or ability".
Saying "stop noticing that someone's skin color is different" makes everyone feel racist, and then also makes everyone think "well shit, if racism is just noticing something maybe these liberal namby-pambies are just being jerks and maybe there is no racism and just whining because man I feel put upon. Maybe they're racist... against me?"
I mean remember that godawful study a while ago about how children gasp were shown to group different ethnicities of people differently via I don't know some BS methodology. But the point is people were like "oh my god! babies can be racist?" and that's just a massive misunderstanding. A fucking baby grouping things into "mom/dad looking" and "not mom/dad looking" by various characteristics isn't being racist, it's just being a little dumb person. You can teach kids not to think that because someone looks like X they must then be Y.
Getting rid of racism means leaving room for people to wear their cultural and ethnic backgrounds proudly, without putting down those of others.
Or one try getting rid of nationalism/patriotism in the same move, hopefully removing all the narrow cultural norms/stereotypes and instead emphasize individualism/individualist expression of oneself.
When that happens, acting black/latino/asian is to act like an american.
Culture isn't defined by ethnicity alone.
So, wait a minute. The government can't effect social attitudes WRT racism, but if it ceases to adopt policy that addresses racial inequality, people will stop being racist?
I honestly don't really care whether the government can "change the way people think." I do think the government should adopt policy that helps minority groups overcome discrimination, including affirmative action. There may be a glorious future in which racial discrimination doesn't affect society to the degree that it does today, but it isn't fair to people living right now to say that they should just deal with the consequences of that racism because addressing it makes us uncomfortable.
Also, I think the idea that the government can't affect social change via policy is fucking ridiculous.
ed: I mean, it took the government forcibly integrating the military, schools, and various other institutions for people to admit or realize that integration wasn't the end of the world. That shit didn't happen naturally as a result of people living together, because people weren't living together until the government told them they couldn't segregate anymore.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
As to your first question, that's a no, but only because I disagree with the claim that affirmative action actually addresses racial inequality. It's intensely problematic on many levels - conceptually (racism to make up for past racism), socially (points I made earlier about breeding divisive resentment), and in it's implementation (it is designed to assign benefits based on race alone, and not say, race & economic situation, like first generation college students). That and the focus is actually far too narrow - it becomes a cheap political stance that draws attention and political capital away from substantive change, yielding no discernible results. I don't just think that affirmative action fails to work, I think that it fails to work in addition to undermining the greater goal of ending racism (for reasons stated above). At best it's incredibly short-sighted, prolonging racial-favoritism with a policy of...racial favoritism.
I do not think you read my post carefully enough, because my position here is that the government can only indirectly affect social change, which is why I disagree with your notion that the gov. can succeed on the approach that targets racism directly. They absolutely should criminalize racial discrimination, but my point is that the problem has gone so far beyond present-day discrimination (which does happen and should not be ignored) that I believe an emphasis on the institutional problems (quality and availability of education, health care, social services, legal representation, etc.) would treat both the cause and the symptoms better than anything else.
The thing is, socially there IS such a thing as race right now. Someone whose skin is black does have a different experience than someone whose skin is white in America. It makes it rather hard to talk about those experiences if we don't acknowledge race. It also makes it a lot easier to ignore white privilege--to pretend that everyone starts out from the same place and ends up where they deserve to be (ah, that Puritan work ethic) rather than admitting, well, yes, being black does bring disadvantages like random cops assuming you're a criminal all the time.
Basically, I feel acknowledgement of race is more beneficial than not at this time, because it makes it easier for groups that look/are treated differently to communicate and understand each other.
I really think we need to go back to the cartoon:
It's important to look at everything that is happening in the strip. One of the major points that it makes is not just that blacks were kept down, but that in doing so, whites were elevated. Thus, if we were to just stop looking at race socially, the existing constructs would remain, leaving black people at a disadvantage even if there are no social barriers. So, if we actually want to make things truly equal, we can't just tackle the social issues, but the infrastructure issues. For example, it's rare for someone, once they've gotten a good start in their career, to look for a job in the classic sense - instead, networking comes much more into play. The problem is that if you're cut off from the network (where do you think we get the term "good old boys' club" from), that can basically mean that you are completely cut off from the system as well. And you can't rely on the system choosing to be more inclusive - we tried that, and as it turns out, it didn't work. So you have to force change, which is the purpose of affirmative action.
As for this breeding resentment, I liken it to the old saying "born on third base, but thought he hit a triple." We like to believe that we got where we are by our own virtues, especially in the US with our national myth of "rugged individualism". When someone points out the reality that we in fact didn't, but instead have gained our position in life through outside forces like parents, community, etc., people feel offended by this, especially when it's pointed out that some of these elements weren't exactly the most honest or noble. The thing is, this doesn't make the fact that people do benefit from external forces that grant them advantages any less true, nor does it make pointing out that some of these advantages were accrued through past injustices any less wrong. Just because some people resent that people are popping their bubble of delusion doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to correct those injustices.
As for implementation, the fact is that race can put you at a major advantage or disadvantage no matter where you fall in society. The argument that it's okay for a middle class minority to face social roadblocks in the professional sphere just because they aren't at the absolute bottom rung of society (or worse yet, that such roadblocks somehow don't exist despite evidence to the contrary) is a rather disturbing one. If we actually want to fix structural inequality, then we have to confront it where it occurs.
Except the institutional problems are pretty much due to racism.
And they're reaping the benefits from the conduct of the former.
In the first half here you're saying precisely what I've been saying, but again you're missing my disagreement here. I don't think we can ignore the 'infrastructure issues', and I've said several times that the social issues are difficult to affect directly. Where I disagree, is that affirmative action actually accomplishes what it sets out to do well enough to make up for the fact that you are inflicting more racial injustice.
I agree with this too, we take a narrow view on our own accomplishments, and there are a million ways in which a person's success is affected throughout their life. But you're making an assumption that every white male benefited from slavery or racial preference at some point recent enough to be so relevant as to justify outright racial preference. While this is no doubt true in many cases, it certainly isn't in all - and the reverse is true for groups that were greatly discriminated against in the past. Affirmative action has no way of ensuring that the way it is supposed to work even happens, nor does it even attempt to fucking care! If you want to put it in terms of the oversimplified comic you guys love, it would be more akin to grabbing a random white guy, throwing him down in front of a random black guy, and letting the latter step on top of him to wherever he is going. Congratulations - your policy of direct institutional racism, based on racial generalizations, whose effectiveness is totally questionable, has done nothing but prolong the problem. Do you really think the 50 year old professor in X department at Y university is going to become any less racist on account of a new co-worker being [insert minority]? Or that a group of firefighters will do anything except resent the fact that the new guy, while potentially less qualified, got picked because of the color of his skin? The whole policy is self-defeating on every level, including the social aims it aspires to.
I don't see either of those arguments being made, but you don't think that degree of affectedness matters? Because that's disturbing to me. People starving in forgotten slums at the 'bottom rung of society' were probably more affected by racial inequality (directly and indirectly) than the middle class minority entering the rat-race of higher education. The structural inequality is happening 1000x more directly and severely in the former case, and so deserves more attention.
Nobody is saying they aren't. My point is that it is superior for a myriad of reasons (mostly being that it is infinitely more within the power of the government) to go after the institutional problems.
I think you are misunderstanding the policy goal of affirmative action programs.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think he is misunderstanding affirmative action, period.
There is no misunderstanding, I am attempting to look at the implications and other effects, particularly the effects on the source of the problem to begin with. Are you taking the stance that the policy has no larger motives re: discrimination beyond the individuals it directly works for? That it has worked because an individual - with no consideration for their own affectedness by past racism other than their minority status - got that job, or got into that school? I've stated my myriad of reasons for questioning the worth of affirmative action programs. It seems to me you guys find it more justifiable because you are reasoning from the assumption that everybody who stands to benefit from the policy has suffered from past and present discrimination to a point adequate enough to justify racial discrimination that runs in the opposite direction. This seems to go into the lack of appreciation in your position for the degrees of affectedness racism has, because those most affected by past and present racism in our country are probably closer to starvation and homelessness than they are to graduate schools and higher-end jobs.
I defriended someone I served in the Navy with on facebook after he posted this charming image.
http://media-files.gather.com/images/d188/d195/d745/d224/d96/f3/full.jpg
He claimed it wasn't racist but, hell maybe he even believed it. Tea partiers are pretty fucking stupid after all.
I'm selling my condo to black people at below market prices.
I'm sorry if your ancestors were slave owners. Mine weren't. :P
If you want to argue affirmative action, telling people "you're white and you must pay for your ancestors sins." is a poor argument.
How about "society, in many ways, tilts the scales in your favor today due to past injustices if you're white"?
As much as I'm in favor of programs to alleviate poverty and increase class mobility, those policies don't solve all the problems caused by systemic racism.
And unknownsaint, you seem fixated on the government's inability to change people's attitudes. Which might be true or it might not, but it isn't the point either way. The point of affirmative action is not to get people to stop being racists, it's to mitigate the effects of that racism on minority populations. Those populations are not suffering from past discrimination, they are suffering from discrimination that is happening right now and is documented in a variety of places in society, from employment to the judicial system to housing to education.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The notion of white privilege should never be shorthanded to a statement which presumes that a person or people are descended from slave-owners.
Not unless you want to suddenly find yourself having the wrong argument with a now assuredly hostile person or audience.
That's all I really care to say on the topic. I'll let someone else argue about white privilege.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Just come right out and say privilege, it's much more honest than saying "You're reaping the rewards of slavery." Which is crass, and has a lot of baggage attached to it. It also suggests that I should have inherited some sort of giant plantation or something. :rotate:
Why do so many blacks live in depressed, ghettoized areas of major cities, for example? Well, probably because until the 60s they were literally barred from investing in ways that would have increased their family wealth.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
MF was quite obviously speaking about personal identity there. "We should not ignore Color" and the other associated arguments are falsely generalising this across to discussion of prejudice.
Seems simple to me? Not doing one doesn't threaten the other. What's the problem?
An example: I'm an individualist. I treat everyone based on their personal characteristics. Personality, actions, thoughts, ideas unique to them. I will not look at one person and claim they are the same as another person if I do not know them.
I also studied prejudice and am comfortable using the terminology to discuss prejudice, because I'm studying/discussing how people view other people on average, not how I view other people or how I should view other people. That it's normal to do a thing doesn't mean it should be so. Claiming these terms are okay to describe personal identity because that's the terminology used to study prejudice is a classic case of "that does not follow". Nor does it follow in reverse. They're separate.
Something to think about, if you do mash together personal identity descriptive terms and studying/understanding prejudice descriptive terms, this is the same "grouping" thought process that results in stereotypes in the first place. Whoops?
Yes, actually.
It helps to remember that a lot of racism is unconscious. Human beings tend to remember patterns - if every other professor fits a certain mold, then anybody who breaks that mold is going to seem less professor-like.
Of course, the 50 year old white professor might insist that there is no way he can possibly be racist, and he will fully believe that he is not. He may think that "racism" implies overt bias or malicious intent. But he'd be wrong. Humans are hard wired to build stereotypes and unless you are consciously making deliberate efforts to question and dismantle your own stereotypes, then your stereotypes will build up faster than they can be dispelled.
One of the purposes (though not the only purpose) of affirmative action is to make sure we don't perpetuate patterns where educaion and professionalism are associated with whiteness simply by the power of the human mind to build heuristics.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Unfortunately that inevitably leads my brain into 'The Internet is for Porn'...
Or, you know, Huey Long. Wasn't a President though.
I just am amused when people demand to be called African American, not black, as if the two are mutually exclusive. White people can be African American too. And black people can be from places other than Africa.