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Classism in America

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Re: Classism in America

#81

Post by PaulHoule »

nxzero wrote: post #68
PaulHoule wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found his comment interesting but I don't know what to think about it. Certainly cops and criminals have plenty of reason to get into each other's heads. Maybe a better analogy could be the rift that exists between police and the black communities in many places. Definitely these people have a different perspective about things. There is definitely a hard core of criminals who are coincidentally black who are playi…

Are you responding to my comment? If so, unclear what race has to do with my comment, or for that matter, the topic.

It's a clear case where there is a gap between a community segment and the police and also my original comment was about my own experience of what seems to be "hyper white privilege" in terms of grooving along abnormally well with the cops.

Re: Classism in America

#82

Post by kbenson »

I haven't finished the article yet, but one thing that strikes me is the flamboyant use of vocabulary. Given the topic, I'm not sure whether it's just a peculiarity of the author, an attempt to tailor the reception of the piece with regard to specific audiences, a slight trolling or the reader, or a combination thereof.

For example, early on we get "impecunious" and "shibboleths", followed up shortly afterwards with "booboo" (!). I find it distracting, to the point that I've lost the main thread of the article and I'm now wondering what the author was trying to accomplish with this style, if anything.

I often find myself switching to a different form of conversing when debating here, but I would like to think that's because I'm trying to be precise, and so I switch to a more precise method of expression. Sometimes that makes it into my speech, for example when I'm trying to explain or diagnose a problem. It can be detrimental to communication if leaned on too heavily though.

Re: Classism in America

#83

Post by 100k »

jff wrote: post #53
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there is often a social (status signaling) benefit to disparaging Southerners in many parts of the US. Particularly in coastal, urban areas.

Don't forget "flyover states", to be uttered in the same tone of disgust as "southerner"!

I got a bit of that when I moved to SF. It's harder to pin Midwesterners down by accent, though (city folks, anyway).

Re: Classism in America

#84

Post by fnovd »

kbenson wrote: post #76
tamana wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And remember: if he had encountered a black civilian at that moment, the civilian would not have escaped with his life.

Just because he was quick to classify with a false negative doesn't mean he would have been quick to classify with a false positive. Just because he's a police officer doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to be seen as an individual that makes his own decisions, and has his own opinions, views and predispositions. That you would make such a comment in a discussion about classism and racism is very ironic.

While the outright assertion that a black suspect would have been shot is unjustified, it seems counterintuitive to simultaneously make reference to one erroneous snap judgment (the cop assuming the white woman was not the shooter) without acknowledging the other side of that coin. Why is the cop an allowable surrogate of societal stereotypes when he assumes the white woman is not the shooter, but an "individual that makes his own decisions, and has his own opinions, views and predispositions" when an alternative hypothetical is presented?

Re: Classism in America

#85

Post by nibs »

There has always been, and always will be, class in a society of people. Even among "progressive" societies like coastal North American cities, classism exists. It may be seperating people based on what level of educational attainment you have, or even how politically correct you act around peers (the more the better...?), but it will exist no matter what.

Status was once (and perhaps still is) a useful metric for the level of contribution someone offered a community - doctors, lawyers and others like them get status because status is what a community could use in lieu of payment as a means of expressing gratitude for the useful service the person provides. We attribute status to athletes, musicians, companies and others for the same reason - they give us something we want.

In order to feel like one belongs you must have acceptance from your community, be it a street gang or a country club. One of the most critical dimensions of the character of a person is how you treat someone that you do not have to treat well.

So we should use our progressive monocultural aspirations for good (treat people fairly and as they want to be treated) instead of just talking about how much you want to save the world while you reject people who have a lesser degree than you.

Re: Classism in America

#86

Post by fnovd »

Roboprog wrote: post #70
zeveb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's remarkable to me how folks who would never, ever be seen to say anything rude about other races (or who would only do so very obliquely) will quite loudly smirk about how much they hate Southerners, how stupid they think Southerners are &c. It's all just class. One can be just as intelligent with a Southern accent as one can be stupid with another.

On the other hand, look at how (politically) "those people" behave in aggregate. It might only be a majority of 51%, but clearly there is a sizable portion of people in the (traditionally somewhat sparsely populated) south / center of the country that have quite different values than the the people living along the crowded coasts. Not saying one group is smarter/dumber, just that the difference in values makes it har…

Not everyone southerner has "southern" values. The south also has urban areas where people lean more to the left than their rural counterparts. There are just fewer of them. They (unfairly) get stuck with the same stereotypes.

Re: Classism in America

#87

Post by ska »

PaulHoule wrote: post #62
ska wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, it would be foolish to say all people, even of a given type, think the same. This statement doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of the main purposes of training for many jobs (lawyers, physicists, police, etc.) is explicitly to modify the mental model you apply to the world.

I found his comment interesting but I don't know what to think about it. Certainly cops and criminals have plenty of reason to get into each other's heads. Maybe a better analogy could be the rift that exists between police and the black communities in many places. Definitely these people have a different perspective about things. There is definitely a hard core of criminals who are coincidentally black who are playi…

I think anything approximating segmentation of the population into "cops" , "criminals" and "us" (or "other") is a category error.

Re: Classism in America

#88

Post by kbenson »

fnovd wrote: post #84
kbenson wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because he was quick to classify with a false negative doesn't mean he would have been quick to classify with a false positive. Just because he's a police officer doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to be seen as an individual that makes his own decisions, and has his own opinions, views and predispositions. That you would make such a comment in a discussion about classism and racism is very ironic.

While the outright assertion that a black suspect would have been shot is unjustified, it seems counterintuitive to simultaneously make reference to one erroneous snap judgment (the cop assuming the white woman was not the shooter) without acknowledging the other side of that coin. Why is the cop an allowable surrogate of societal stereotypes when he assumes the white woman is not the shooter, but an "individual that…

> it seems counterintuitive to simultaneously make reference to one erroneous snap judgment (the cop assuming the white woman was not the shooter) without acknowledging the other side of that coin.

No supporting evidence has been presented that a person will necessarily attribute the same level of certainty when positively or negatively associating a person to a category, either globally or under specific circumstances that match these. Identifying someone as a threat and discounting someone as not a threat may engage different levels of reasoning and heuristics in different circumstances, and assuming they are equivalent without justification is a mistake, in my opinion.

> Why is the cop an allowable surrogate of societal stereotypes when he assumes the white woman is not the shooter, but an "individual that makes his own decisions, and has his own opinions, views and predispositions" when an alternative hypothetical is presented?

His behavior with regard to race was classified based purely on his profession. I'm not sure how that's justifiable.

Edit: To more directly address what I think your point is, we were presented a situation, not necessarily the police officer's reasoning and perspective. We don't know if the reason he thought she was not the shooter was her color, gender, clothing, bearing or some combination of those and other factors. There is little information to go on, so we shouldn't assume we know much.

Re: Classism in America

#89

Post by henrikschroder »

Being from Europe, I was also weirded out that almost all discussions of class in the US was about money. To me, the separation of economic class and social class is clearer than to the average American.

But, the same rules of "invisibility" apply where I'm from. Whenever I've talked to my upper-middle class friends about what social class they belong to, they are completely clueless. They don't know they belong to it, they don't know others don't, and they completely subscribe to the "we're all just regular middle class" mentality. The friends I have from other classes, or who have also made class journeys, are much more in tune, they have no problems seeing class and classism.

One thing that was very illuminating to me in this article was the notion of class as culture, and class as performance.

> It is a common misconception that the primary obstacle to being in a much higher class is money to afford the things by which one performs that class. The limiting factor is not money, it is this: it is impossible to join a culture the ways of which you know nothing. You may come by money, but the ignorance of how to use it to perform that higher class will keep you out as adamantly as if there were a wall built around it.

Holy crap. Yes. A thousand times yes.

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