Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
John Scalzi of Old Man's War fame recently had a blog post about this that I, frankly, really didn't care for. I love the hell out of Scalzi's writing, and visit his blog daily, and the tone of it kind of caught me off-guard. I guess it's a thing nowadays, where even in the midst of making good, cogent points about pressing social issues, you need to be as snarky and unlikeable as possible while doing it, and it's not really winning the hearts-and-minds fight. Maybe that kind of dialogue just is not for me, as Kevin Smith would put it.
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
EDIT: Or do it via standardized testing scores of the high school from which the student graduated from.
The weirdest thing about affirmative action is that it is ostensibly about race, but Asians don't benefit from it. I agree that it would be better if it was keyed off of socioeconomic status.
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
also, i'm not sure why the response is 'shouldn't it instead be based on...' when it's a complicated problem. if the problem of social inequality is complex, why are the solutions expected to be simple? it seems strange to me to grapple with a problem as immense as this and propose a solution that is "well instead of fixing this inequality, we'll fix this one".
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Well, you see a complicated problem and see the need for a complicated solution, I see a complicated problem being solved by a series of simple solutions.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Well, you see a complicated problem and see the need for a complicated solution, I see a complicated problem being solved by a series of simple solutions.
that's pretty semantical. why is it then so important to prune this one program? you still support the idea that the problem is multifaceted and the situation calls for multiple attack vectors- but by making sure each conceivable, individual entity of injustice gets its own talking point you're 'simplifying' it? that doesn't really make sense to me. affirmative action is about repairing inherent social iniquities. saying "well let's fix a different sort of social iniquity with this program and allow other, discrete approaches to handle the race thing" doesn't make your solution more elegant, simple, or just.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Well, you see a complicated problem and see the need for a complicated solution, I see a complicated problem being solved by a series of simple solutions.
that's pretty semantical. why is it then so important to prune this one program? you still support the idea that the problem is multifaceted and the situation calls for multiple attack vectors- but by making sure each conceivable, individual entity of injustice gets its own talking point you're 'simplifying' it? that doesn't really make sense to me. affirmative action is about repairing inherent social iniquities. saying "well let's fix a different sort of social iniquity with this program and allow other, discrete approaches to handle the race thing" doesn't make your solution more elegant, simple, or just.
I never said that it was uniquely important to look at this one program, it was the first thing to came to my mind. I'm just saying that just because it's going to take a complex solution at a bunch of different levels to address the problems we have, it doesn't mean that we can't make incremental improvements within the framework that we do have.
EDIT: With regards to the "elegant, simple, or just" coda to your post - I wasn't even thinking in terms of that. The thought process I had was more along the lines of "AA purports to fix college admission rates being skewed, they currently classify based on race, classifying based on wealth (i.e. given that the race classification is largely an analogue for "poor") might be a more efficient way of going about this."
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
I find it interesting that being a female is worth a point when more women than men are entering college , and are graduating at higher rates(born out in your own experience). I believe them same is actually true of lgbt people as well. And is definetly true of asains.
There is another college AA cases going to SCOTUS , i have to find the info, but one of the things that peaked my interest was that the vast majority of the afro-American students wh were being admitted were from upper or middle class homes. Which makes sense, but also makes many of the arguments for the admition points boost, like no access to sat test prep or poor school systems in general, non applicable.
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
If you add a point for LGBT, you're going to have every kid applying to college checking that box since it is completely unverifiable without asking each student for a sex tape or psych evaluation or something equally insane. I've never seen a college that asks for sexual orientation, and you'd have to show me some data that says LGBT people are not fairly represented as a portion of the population at universities to to get me on board with it.
I'm OK with the rest of it, though.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
I find it interesting that being a female is worth a point when more women than men are entering college , and are graduating at higher rates(born out in your own experience). I believe them same is actually true of lgbt people as well. And is definetly true of asains.
The point system I proposed was simply to level the playing field in the context of increasing diversity and decreasing favored-status just being black alone as well as enabling people who after graduating will suffer from the lack of privilege this thread's OP is predicated upon.
If Affirmative Action's singular goal is just to "get more blacks in college," that's kind of a problem for everyone else who isn't black or a straight white middle-class male.
Affirmative Action for is about representation, not privilege. Asians don't get any boost when applying to Berkeley, for example. Why? Because the school already admits a huge percentage of asians based purely on GPA/SAT.
Affirmative Action for is about representation, not privilege.
Exactly. And that's kind of a problem when you keep out high-achieving students who are some combination of poor/LGBT/non-Black and let in favored minorities who may score worse and come from better backgrounds.
The poor Hispanic lesbian with a 4.0 seeking a degree in hard sciences should get priority over the middle-class Black guy with a 3.0 going into kinesiology or general business.
Affirmative Action for is about representation, not privilege. Asians don't get any boost when applying to Berkeley, for example. Why? Because the school already admits a huge percentage of asians based purely on GPA/SAT.
Berkeley's student demographics are a really interesting reason why strict AA representation quotas will never be enforced there. The only way they could reach reasonably equal representation would be to get rid of about 90% of their Asian students. They would need to cut down from a population of 43% Asian students to about 5% to match the national numbers. Although these open spots would increase Black student representation from 4% to 12% and Latino/Latina student representation from 13% to 16%, the vast majority of the benefit would go towards raising White student representation from 33% to 63%.
Huh. I don't believe in privilege so much as perspective. If you're white growing up in a black neighborhood, you have a different understanding of race that has more to do with experience than privilege.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
I think this campaign is pretty awful, and that it will have a negative effect on net, since only people drinking the privilege koolaid will interpret it in the way it seems to be intended, and everyone else will just say "what do you mean making me white makes me racists?" Some issues are too complex to be reduced to a billboard, and this is one case where I think trying and failing is worse than not trying at all.
Quoted for truth. I was gonna say more with this post, but really, it'd all just be snark. This above is all that needs to be said.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Huh. I don't believe in privilege so much as perspective. If you're white growing up in a black neighborhood, you have a different understanding of race that has more to do with experience than privilege.
At the same time, your experience with race is going to be dramatically different than the black folks in that black neighborhood.
it's isn't possible to have a public advocacy campaign that deals with all the nuances of race in our society. It's totally predictable and inevitable that any time somebody makes any kind of statement about racism in our society, somebody is going to say "but I'm not like that!" And maybe they're not and that's great.
But I would rather see these issues confronted head on than kind of danced around or only discussed in environments where there is already consensus one way or another, and ultimately the only way to do that is to kind of hit people in the face. These are pretty tame ads that make an obvious (if general) statement. Anybody who finds this offensive wasn't going to be reached by any softer message, either.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
also the idea that this campaign is somehow worse than doing nothing is just dumb as hell.
If you're a white person who goes about their daily life without really thinking or caring about race and you see this ad, maybe you're offended by it momentarily. Even if you completely miss the point and go "man but I'm not a racist!", how has this actually made anything worse? Do we expect that these people are actually liable to go out and act racist when they didn't previously?
I'm going to guess not. You'll just go right back to where you were before: ignoring the issue because in lots of communities, that's really easy to do.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
it's isn't possible to have a public advocacy campaign that deals with all the nuances of race in our society. It's totally predictable and inevitable that any time somebody makes any kind of statement about racism in our society, somebody is going to say "but I'm not like that!" And maybe they're not and that's great.
But I would rather see these issues confronted head on than kind of danced around or only discussed in environments where there is already consensus one way or another, and ultimately the only way to do that is to kind of hit people in the face. These are pretty tame ads that make an obvious (if general) statement. Anybody who finds this offensive wasn't going to be reached by any softer message, either.
The constant discussion of "those people" who really really need to be handled with kid gloves but will totally change if we're just nice enough but can't deal with any messages not tailor-made to make them feel good is just silly as fuck. It's an excuse to dodge out of any substantive conversation because you don't have a problem it's just these people see they have problems and well let's talk about them they're very important and much more interesting.
Affirmative Action for is about representation, not privilege.
Exactly. And that's kind of a problem when you keep out high-achieving students who are some combination of poor/LGBT/non-Black and let in favored minorities who may score worse and come from better backgrounds.
The poor Hispanic lesbian with a 4.0 seeking a degree in hard sciences should get priority over the middle-class Black guy with a 3.0 going into kinesiology or general business.
this is pretty much a nonexistent problem, though.
Affirmative action exists for two main reasons: one, mentioned previously, is that being in an environment with minorities has beneficial effects on the majority population, even though they probably wouldn't have self-selected into that environment.
The second is that as much as its an imperfect solution, there are lots of real people suffering under discrimination right now and they deserve relief, and if the implementation is kind of a mess that's a price we're willing to pay.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Affirmative Action for is about representation, not privilege.
Exactly. And that's kind of a problem when you keep out high-achieving students who are some combination of poor/LGBT/non-Black and let in favored minorities who may score worse and come from better backgrounds.
The poor Hispanic lesbian with a 4.0 seeking a degree in hard sciences should get priority over the middle-class Black guy with a 3.0 going into kinesiology or general business.
this is pretty much a nonexistent problem, though.
Affirmative action exists for two main reasons: one, mentioned previously, is that being in an environment with minorities has beneficial effects on the majority population, even though they probably wouldn't have self-selected into that environment.
The second is that as much as its an imperfect solution, there are lots of real people suffering under discrimination right now and they deserve relief, and if the implementation is kind of a mess that's a price we're willing to pay.
Your points are good, but they don't really address anything I said.
My system would install minorities into the majority population as well, just not limited to Blacks only or giving preferential treatment on basis of race. Certainly, in today's political climate, seeing the achievements of a LGBT or Hispanic or Muslim person in society is far more topical and relevant than just mixing in a bunch of Black folks just because they're Black.
As to your second point, you seem to be arguing that one kind of discriminated party deserves preferential entitlement to all others. I don't like that idea, and never have.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that affirmative action only benefits blacks. Colleges (and for that matter, state hiring) have admission incentives for all sorts of minority groups, including the poor! We don't call need-based financial aid or college placement programs in rural/poor school districts affirmative action, but really that's what they are.
As to your second point, you seem to be arguing that one kind of discriminated party deserves preferential entitlement to all others. I don't like that idea, and never have.
Too bad. Not all discrimination is the same and our policy responses to it should be different. Maybe not giving race any mind at all would eventually move us toward a more equal society (I doubt it but I suppose it's possible), but that doesn't really matter because it isn't fair to say to the people suffering systemic discrimination right now "sorry guys, we're gonna see how shit looks in 20 years."
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Huh. I don't believe in privilege so much as perspective. If you're white growing up in a black neighborhood, you have a different understanding of race that has more to do with experience than privilege.
At the same time, your experience with race is going to be dramatically different than the black folks in that black neighborhood.
that's still perspective though
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Question, related to "white privilege": Why wouldn't affirmative action be more properly done on the basis of socioeconomic status, via your freshman year FAFSA with your parents/guardians' information, instead of race? This way, the white student in the inner city gets the boost society thinks he deserves, while the black student who lives in the three-quarter-of-a-million dollar house in the suburbs does not have that bonus placed onto his admissions scores, given that he was afforded more opportunities?
while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
Let me blow your mind, Ross - they already do this!
Take, for example, the infamous UM case a few years back. What didn't get talked about was that race was just one of a number of weights that the university employed - there were also weights for being the first member in your family to go to college, coming from a disadvantaged region like the Upper Peninsula, etc. Yet the plaintiff wasn't saying that a Yooper took her spot...
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Why? Exactly how did you learn about the concept, and why was your first instinct not to get indignant and not think about it ever again?
I mean for fuck's sake, did everyone here get a back rub and some nice herbal tea while a trusted friend explained the concept of privilege?
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Why? Exactly how did you learn about the concept, and why was your first instinct not to get indignant and not think about it ever again?
I mean for fuck's sake, did everyone here get a back rub and some nice herbal tea while a trusted friend explained the concept of privilege?
I don't usually agree with SKM, but I have to agree here that the particular choice of words by this ad campaign puts people on the defensive from the get-go. It's hard not to interpret the words, "it's hard to see racism when you're white," as, "white people inherently don't understand racism, ergo, white folks are probably racist all the time and don't even know it," which itself quickly becomes, "most white people are casual racists." And that's just inflammatory and accusatory, and not something people readily choose to engage with.
The concept of privilege is exceedingly complicated and not limited to just "whites v. everyone else," so to have a campaign that is both reductive and offensive gets us nowhere.
I've only shown the image to about 4 people, all of them white males. All 4 felt the image was offensive. When they asked "What are they even trying to convey?" I spoke with them of what little I know about the concept of white privilege, and they agreed it is an issue deserving further discussion. They also all felt that the sign appeared to have absolutely no relation to that topic except for offending people.
A better question would be "why does the sign offend you?"
An honest response to which is probably "because as white person, the sign implies that I do racist stuff without even realizing I do racist stuff."
Which most white people do, just as a consequence of being a member of the privileged part of the population, which is the point in the first place.
Maybe we should make a similar billboard series with a black guy in the background and says "it's hard to see antisemitism when you're Christian" and see how the response varies.
A better question would be "why does the sign offend you?"
An honest response to which is probably "because as white person, the sign implies that I do racist stuff without even realizing I do racist stuff."
Which most white people do, just as a consequence of being a member of the privileged part of the population, which is the point in the first place.
It doesn't just apply to racism either. Several of the social justice threads on this forum takes really odd turns because the idea that you can hold subconsciously hold prejudices/act on prejudices and still be a good person just doesn't mesh with people. "I'm not a bad person, so I'm immune to ever acting on prejudices!".
Which is a lovely thougth, but not how the world has ever worked. And it gives a disturbing net result where people believe that if they intellectually hold a particular belief/ideal - like, say, they consider themselves against all forms of racism - they are completely without need to examine how they actually act.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Why? Exactly how did you learn about the concept, and why was your first instinct not to get indignant and not think about it ever again?
Rodney King was my introduction to racism. It got my attention primarily because nobody bashed me over the head (ho ho!) about how difficult it was for me to see race related issues while I watched the video of one black guy get the shit beat out of him by five white guys.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Why? Exactly how did you learn about the concept, and why was your first instinct not to get indignant and not think about it ever again?
Rodney King was my introduction to racism. It got my attention primarily because nobody bashed me over the head (ho ho!) about how difficult it was for me to see race related issues while I watched the video of one black guy get the shit beat out of him by five white guys.
One of my best friends became a feminist, and explained privilege to me. Then I researched it on my own, and while I don't always agree with a lot of what people say on this topic, I certainly see it as a legitimate social grievance. This sign would not have gotten pre-understanding privlege SKFM to examine anything. I would have been one of the guys saying "hey, being white does not make you racist." I get what the sign is going for now, but only because I did the research to have the background to recognize the message. If the sign only works for people who already understand the message, then it is only useful if it can convince someone who understands but doesn't beleive that privlege is a problem, and I don't see how it would accomplish that.
First, no matter how true it is, its strange that the ability to label an entire group of people by saying "you are white, you are privileged" is somehow acceptable. It really doesnt matter if its true. I would give examples of true statements about other races that would offend, but inherently, I'd offend folks by doing so. So I will refrain. Point is, you cant just generalize like that, its offensive in of itself.
Secondly, I have issues with the actual point. Ever be the only white person in a room filled with black people? I have. I walked into a food court during a meeting of sorts or something and was the only white kid in there in college. Its awkward. They all stared at me. So I can definitely understand the advantage I have by most people in a position of hiring or whatever to being similar to me. I get that, I dont need to not be white to understand that.
But, a lot of the problems arent "OMG you are white, you dont know what its like" and more "OMG you are in the majority, you dont know what its like." Its not inherently a white thing. There are two things that facilitate the privilege, being the majority and being in a certain class.
But when you tie these things directly to being white you start to lose people and make them defensive.
Then there is the entire concept of "privilege" being earned. I mean, what are we supposed to do, hit a culture reset button every few generations to keep things fair? Isnt one of the major points to raising kids to try and give them advantages you didnt have, to make their life better? Obviously slavery sort of breaks this argument, because, that shit gave one group way too much of a head start. But it doesn't dismiss the whole thing.
Its easy to see where you have that privilege, whats much much harder is to convince people that it wasnt earned. To be honest, I havent heard an argument that would compell folks. Personally, its hard to look at my own parents and how hard they worked to give me an awesome head start and then diminish it by saying "well they were white, so its not fair."
And that's the mentality you have to try and fight. Pointing out the privilege doesn't make much headway there and does get folks defensive.
First, no matter how true it is, its strange that the ability to label an entire group of people by saying "you are white, you are privileged" is somehow acceptable. It really doesnt matter if its true. I would give examples of true statements about other races that would offend, but inherently, I'd offend folks by doing so. So I will refrain. Point is, you cant just generalize like that, its offensive in of itself.
Secondly, I have issues with the actual point. Ever be the only white person in a room filled with black people? I have. I walked into a food court during a meeting of sorts or something and was the only white kid in there in college. Its awkward. They all stared at me. So I can definitely understand the advantage I have by most people in a position of hiring or whatever to being similar to me. I get that, I dont need to not be white to understand that.
But, a lot of the problems arent "OMG you are white, you dont know what its like" and more "OMG you are in the majority, you dont know what its like." Its not inherently a white thing. There are two things that facilitate the privilege, being the majority and being in a certain class.
But when you tie these things directly to being white you start to lose people and make them defensive.
Then there is the entire concept of "privilege" being earned. I mean, what are we supposed to do, hit a culture reset button every few generations to keep things fair? Isnt one of the major points to raising kids to try and give them advantages you didnt have, to make their life better? Obviously slavery sort of breaks this argument, because, that shit gave one group way too much of a head start. But it doesn't dismiss the whole thing.
Its easy to see where you have that privilege, whats much much harder is to convince people that it wasnt earned. To be honest, I havent heard an argument that would compell folks. Personally, its hard to look at my own parents and how hard they worked to give me an awesome head start and then diminish it by saying "well they were white, so its not fair."
And that's the mentality you have to try and fight. Pointing out the privilege doesn't make much headway there and does get folks defensive.
I, too, have no privilege because of that one time I was made to feel uncomfortable because of my skin color.
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while i think it's pretty uncontroversial that socioeconomic status is a stronger predictor of opportunity than race, this proposal meets an obvious flaw: what happens when you come across a poor white teen and a poor black teen? that poor white kid might need a hand up more than that well off black kid, but that poor black kid very likely needs it more than that poor white kid. so sure, the idea of alleviating socioeconomic ills is compelling. but by reducing a complex issue to only money, you ignore that even amongst the poor there is still privilege.
it speaks even more loudly among the economically disadvantaged. one of the most awful instances of institutionalized bigotry and privilege in this country is the slant against minorities in the judicial system. given that violent crime is largely a product of poverty, poor black kids get doubly fucked in a way that is awful to behold.
The weirdest thing about affirmative action is that it is ostensibly about race, but Asians don't benefit from it. I agree that it would be better if it was keyed off of socioeconomic status.
This.
And also, one of the goals of affirmative action programs when it comes to college admissions is to ensure an ethnically diverse student body. Switching all affirmative action programs to just socioeconomic status would reduce that diversity on campus.
that's pretty semantical. why is it then so important to prune this one program? you still support the idea that the problem is multifaceted and the situation calls for multiple attack vectors- but by making sure each conceivable, individual entity of injustice gets its own talking point you're 'simplifying' it? that doesn't really make sense to me. affirmative action is about repairing inherent social iniquities. saying "well let's fix a different sort of social iniquity with this program and allow other, discrete approaches to handle the race thing" doesn't make your solution more elegant, simple, or just.
It could be a point-based thing though, right?
- Poor +2
- Black/Hispanic +1
- Asian +0.5
- Female +1
- LGBT +1
Affirmative Action has its heart in the right place, but it's broken as all get out, and a little offensive to the untold numbers of minorities and affected groups that it doesn't help.
True Story: I can't recall a single Black male I went to college with that wasn't there to play sports. Also, I was in the honors' program in college, and we had zero Black members. It was mostly whites (and mostly white females), with several hispanics, asians, and middle easterners. No blacks at all.
Also, the scholarships awarded by the NCAA for athletic participation are absolute shit in terms of the types of degrees it produces. In major div. 1 programs, graduation rates are around or less than 50%, and almost all of those degrees are useless (gen. studies, kinesiology, et al).
I never said that it was uniquely important to look at this one program, it was the first thing to came to my mind. I'm just saying that just because it's going to take a complex solution at a bunch of different levels to address the problems we have, it doesn't mean that we can't make incremental improvements within the framework that we do have.
EDIT: With regards to the "elegant, simple, or just" coda to your post - I wasn't even thinking in terms of that. The thought process I had was more along the lines of "AA purports to fix college admission rates being skewed, they currently classify based on race, classifying based on wealth (i.e. given that the race classification is largely an analogue for "poor") might be a more efficient way of going about this."
I find it interesting that being a female is worth a point when more women than men are entering college , and are graduating at higher rates(born out in your own experience). I believe them same is actually true of lgbt people as well. And is definetly true of asains.
There is another college AA cases going to SCOTUS , i have to find the info, but one of the things that peaked my interest was that the vast majority of the afro-American students wh were being admitted were from upper or middle class homes. Which makes sense, but also makes many of the arguments for the admition points boost, like no access to sat test prep or poor school systems in general, non applicable.
If you add a point for LGBT, you're going to have every kid applying to college checking that box since it is completely unverifiable without asking each student for a sex tape or psych evaluation or something equally insane. I've never seen a college that asks for sexual orientation, and you'd have to show me some data that says LGBT people are not fairly represented as a portion of the population at universities to to get me on board with it.
I'm OK with the rest of it, though.
The point system I proposed was simply to level the playing field in the context of increasing diversity and decreasing favored-status just being black alone as well as enabling people who after graduating will suffer from the lack of privilege this thread's OP is predicated upon.
If Affirmative Action's singular goal is just to "get more blacks in college," that's kind of a problem for everyone else who isn't black or a straight white middle-class male.
Exactly. And that's kind of a problem when you keep out high-achieving students who are some combination of poor/LGBT/non-Black and let in favored minorities who may score worse and come from better backgrounds.
The poor Hispanic lesbian with a 4.0 seeking a degree in hard sciences should get priority over the middle-class Black guy with a 3.0 going into kinesiology or general business.
Berkeley's student demographics are a really interesting reason why strict AA representation quotas will never be enforced there. The only way they could reach reasonably equal representation would be to get rid of about 90% of their Asian students. They would need to cut down from a population of 43% Asian students to about 5% to match the national numbers. Although these open spots would increase Black student representation from 4% to 12% and Latino/Latina student representation from 13% to 16%, the vast majority of the benefit would go towards raising White student representation from 33% to 63%.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Quoted for truth. I was gonna say more with this post, but really, it'd all just be snark. This above is all that needs to be said.
At the same time, your experience with race is going to be dramatically different than the black folks in that black neighborhood.
it's isn't possible to have a public advocacy campaign that deals with all the nuances of race in our society. It's totally predictable and inevitable that any time somebody makes any kind of statement about racism in our society, somebody is going to say "but I'm not like that!" And maybe they're not and that's great.
But I would rather see these issues confronted head on than kind of danced around or only discussed in environments where there is already consensus one way or another, and ultimately the only way to do that is to kind of hit people in the face. These are pretty tame ads that make an obvious (if general) statement. Anybody who finds this offensive wasn't going to be reached by any softer message, either.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
If you're a white person who goes about their daily life without really thinking or caring about race and you see this ad, maybe you're offended by it momentarily. Even if you completely miss the point and go "man but I'm not a racist!", how has this actually made anything worse? Do we expect that these people are actually liable to go out and act racist when they didn't previously?
I'm going to guess not. You'll just go right back to where you were before: ignoring the issue because in lots of communities, that's really easy to do.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The constant discussion of "those people" who really really need to be handled with kid gloves but will totally change if we're just nice enough but can't deal with any messages not tailor-made to make them feel good is just silly as fuck. It's an excuse to dodge out of any substantive conversation because you don't have a problem it's just these people see they have problems and well let's talk about them they're very important and much more interesting.
this is pretty much a nonexistent problem, though.
Affirmative action exists for two main reasons: one, mentioned previously, is that being in an environment with minorities has beneficial effects on the majority population, even though they probably wouldn't have self-selected into that environment.
The second is that as much as its an imperfect solution, there are lots of real people suffering under discrimination right now and they deserve relief, and if the implementation is kind of a mess that's a price we're willing to pay.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Your points are good, but they don't really address anything I said.
My system would install minorities into the majority population as well, just not limited to Blacks only or giving preferential treatment on basis of race. Certainly, in today's political climate, seeing the achievements of a LGBT or Hispanic or Muslim person in society is far more topical and relevant than just mixing in a bunch of Black folks just because they're Black.
As to your second point, you seem to be arguing that one kind of discriminated party deserves preferential entitlement to all others. I don't like that idea, and never have.
Too bad. Not all discrimination is the same and our policy responses to it should be different. Maybe not giving race any mind at all would eventually move us toward a more equal society (I doubt it but I suppose it's possible), but that doesn't really matter because it isn't fair to say to the people suffering systemic discrimination right now "sorry guys, we're gonna see how shit looks in 20 years."
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
that's still perspective though
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Let me blow your mind, Ross - they already do this!
Take, for example, the infamous UM case a few years back. What didn't get talked about was that race was just one of a number of weights that the university employed - there were also weights for being the first member in your family to go to college, coming from a disadvantaged region like the Upper Peninsula, etc. Yet the plaintiff wasn't saying that a Yooper took her spot...
Just to throw my two cents regarding this campaign: they used an effective form of phrasing, and it's going to offend some people. The fact of the matter is racism is a subject that when discussed, can't be beaten around the bush with, and if someone isn't going to discuss or look into the issue without being prepared to possibly feel uncomfortable, then maybe they aren't as concerned or invested with the issue as they might think they are.
That's all fine, but if you aren't concerned with effectively engaging them, then don't be mad at them when they don't respond to your concerns.
o_O
But you agree that's not what's happening with this campaign, right?
I don't actually. What I see when I look at this campaign is a ton of white people saying "just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist" and getting indignant about the ad instead of thinking about the message.
Why? Exactly how did you learn about the concept, and why was your first instinct not to get indignant and not think about it ever again?
I mean for fuck's sake, did everyone here get a back rub and some nice herbal tea while a trusted friend explained the concept of privilege?
I don't usually agree with SKM, but I have to agree here that the particular choice of words by this ad campaign puts people on the defensive from the get-go. It's hard not to interpret the words, "it's hard to see racism when you're white," as, "white people inherently don't understand racism, ergo, white folks are probably racist all the time and don't even know it," which itself quickly becomes, "most white people are casual racists." And that's just inflammatory and accusatory, and not something people readily choose to engage with.
The concept of privilege is exceedingly complicated and not limited to just "whites v. everyone else," so to have a campaign that is both reductive and offensive gets us nowhere.
An honest response to which is probably "because as white person, the sign implies that I do racist stuff without even realizing I do racist stuff."
Which most white people do, just as a consequence of being a member of the privileged part of the population, which is the point in the first place.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Maybe we should make a similar billboard series with a black guy in the background and says "it's hard to see antisemitism when you're Christian" and see how the response varies.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Which is a lovely thougth, but not how the world has ever worked. And it gives a disturbing net result where people believe that if they intellectually hold a particular belief/ideal - like, say, they consider themselves against all forms of racism - they are completely without need to examine how they actually act.
Rodney King was my introduction to racism. It got my attention primarily because nobody bashed me over the head (ho ho!) about how difficult it was for me to see race related issues while I watched the video of one black guy get the shit beat out of him by five white guys.
One of my best friends became a feminist, and explained privilege to me. Then I researched it on my own, and while I don't always agree with a lot of what people say on this topic, I certainly see it as a legitimate social grievance. This sign would not have gotten pre-understanding privlege SKFM to examine anything. I would have been one of the guys saying "hey, being white does not make you racist." I get what the sign is going for now, but only because I did the research to have the background to recognize the message. If the sign only works for people who already understand the message, then it is only useful if it can convince someone who understands but doesn't beleive that privlege is a problem, and I don't see how it would accomplish that.
First, no matter how true it is, its strange that the ability to label an entire group of people by saying "you are white, you are privileged" is somehow acceptable. It really doesnt matter if its true. I would give examples of true statements about other races that would offend, but inherently, I'd offend folks by doing so. So I will refrain. Point is, you cant just generalize like that, its offensive in of itself.
Secondly, I have issues with the actual point. Ever be the only white person in a room filled with black people? I have. I walked into a food court during a meeting of sorts or something and was the only white kid in there in college. Its awkward. They all stared at me. So I can definitely understand the advantage I have by most people in a position of hiring or whatever to being similar to me. I get that, I dont need to not be white to understand that.
But, a lot of the problems arent "OMG you are white, you dont know what its like" and more "OMG you are in the majority, you dont know what its like." Its not inherently a white thing. There are two things that facilitate the privilege, being the majority and being in a certain class.
But when you tie these things directly to being white you start to lose people and make them defensive.
Then there is the entire concept of "privilege" being earned. I mean, what are we supposed to do, hit a culture reset button every few generations to keep things fair? Isnt one of the major points to raising kids to try and give them advantages you didnt have, to make their life better? Obviously slavery sort of breaks this argument, because, that shit gave one group way too much of a head start. But it doesn't dismiss the whole thing.
Its easy to see where you have that privilege, whats much much harder is to convince people that it wasnt earned. To be honest, I havent heard an argument that would compell folks. Personally, its hard to look at my own parents and how hard they worked to give me an awesome head start and then diminish it by saying "well they were white, so its not fair."
And that's the mentality you have to try and fight. Pointing out the privilege doesn't make much headway there and does get folks defensive.
I, too, have no privilege because of that one time I was made to feel uncomfortable because of my skin color.