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Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

bbc.com

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Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#101

Post by nitrogen »

imacerealkiller wrote: post #35
tester34 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Going to university means a few more years of them not being able to work full-time and contribute to the household income. But for sure, if education was free it would improve access to education and restore some balance. In Poland you can attend higher edu institutions on weekends and work meanwhile. It often costs you like 1.x * minimal wage per semester, thus in total like 17K PLN for bachelor/engineering degree…

This sounds like a great system and more countries should implement this. In Singapore (where I'm born), there's night classes/part-time degrees for people who need to work. It would be wonderful if more countries recognized the need for flexible studying options like Poland.

US state-run colleges and universities usually offer night classes as well, but they are just as expensive as day classes.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#102

Post by nitrogen »

shrikant wrote: post #44
reacharavindh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be shocked if it were true. Where did you see such a law?

It sounded rubbish, so I looked it up and it's a thing! :-O https://www.dw.com/en/why-denmark-is-clamping-down-on-non-we...

Would integration into Danish society be worse if immigrant communities formed insular enclaves? I can see a rational reason to encourage cultural intermixing, so that different cultural groups have to be aware of and support each other.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#103

Post by literallyaduck »

Doing birthday stories for the rich shows and being told to use the servants entrance seems likely a classist discrimination not a race problem at first glance. Race seems to be the major factor for much of the rest of the article, which I'm not discounting. Whether maid or journalist count as tradespeople or guests is another discussion and the bigger question is why should it matter if the person is a maid or reporter why is it okay to deperson a class of people because of their job?

Back to the discussion of race, how far have we come from the hotel owners denying this black woman access? Airbnb recently has had issues with people attempting to discriminate on race.

Other discussion points aside this reporter got the job done and got the story: "You do what you need to do in order to get the story."

I believe the most important line from the article is here:

"And if you don't have people who see the world through different eyes represented, you just don't have a full picture of what's going on." Often I see only one party line, group think, everyone else is wrong because we are right and facts which don't support the narrative should be downvoted and suppressed attitude which will only create fractured communities and alienated people. To come together we must seek the truth, we must not silence different eyes, but must provide reasonable reproof with documentation to those who spread misinformation.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#104

Post by thewakalix »

blueflow wrote: post #87
hairofadog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why criticizing BLM automatically makes something racist. It doesn't! Any social movement, no matter how just their cause, should be willing to accept valid criticism. However, when Person A says "look at this instance of systemic racism" and someone else replies "But MLK cheated on his wife!!", that's not arguing in good faith; that's commonly known as "whataboutism". [^1] > I searched about the Chicag…

> If you google for the exact phrase "google Chicago shootings", including the word "google" This thread is the first result for me. Not kidding. Could it be that you made it up that its a dog whistle? I'm doubting your good faith here.

Google gives personalized search results. It seems Google is aware that you frequent Hacker News. DuckDuckGo has non-personalized search results: https://archive.vn/mxh08.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#105

Post by cplanas »

nceqs3 wrote: post #33
reacharavindh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely why Education should not be treated as a business. If Education was free for every citizen, it does a lot to bring equality of opportunity (it does not fix all of the damages from discrimination, but aids significantly in recovery). So is healthcare. Having experienced education and healthcare in USA and Denmark, I cannot believe such extremes exist in the same world. It blows my mind that the wealt…

Denmark just passed a law that limits the number of non-white people in a neighborhood.

I lived in DK, and as shocking as it sounds, it's true. Just a nitpick: the law is not exactly against "non-white" people, but about "non-Western". African-Americans would count as Western, Russians would not. But in effect, the policy affects mainly Muslims: it was probably designed with that in mind.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#106

Post by nitrogen »

Tycho wrote: post #92
vb234 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been living in the US for 21 years and whenever I experience this I assume it is racism and/or prejudice. I cannot confront them so I have no way of knowing their exact reasons for doing this. Maybe I’m just socially awkward and I don’t quite know how to play native in this country. It didn’t bother me much until the last couple of years. I now have a young daughter who’s friends with a lot of the other kids in…

Since it’s generally harder to recognise people of other ethnicities, maybe they either mistakingly think it’s not you (without other context to help them), or think it might be but don’t want to take the risk of offending a stranger.

Even within the same ethnicity, there are myriad reasons why someone might not be confident that they recognize someone else, or that if they do, an unprompted greeting would be welcome.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#107

Post by MichaelGroves »

cherrycherry98 wrote: post #97
DrNosferatu wrote: post #12

"Inside the newsroom some of them would say hello or nod or even speak to me but if they saw me outside the building they would pretend they didn't know me". When you experience this as an immigrant (so the ignoring party knows you have a different nationality) is it generally racism? - What do you think?

This assumes a whole lot. How do you know for certain that the person is treating you differently from others because of your background? Depending on the person and the prevailing culture it may be perfectly normal to more or less ignore someone outside the office. If you're constantly on the lookout for some nefarious activity you may start to interpret it where it doesn't actually exist. I've definitely done the s…

> Depending on the person and the prevailing culture it may be perfectly normal to more or less ignore someone outside the office

Precisely this. When about town in public, I ignore everybody except my closest friends or family, or people I have arranged ahead of time to meet up with. For me, this is an application of the Golden Rule. I do not like it when work acquaintances approach me in public and start trying to idly chat me. I don't like it when that's done to me, so I don't do it to others.

Hearing that some people will interpret this as racism or similar is disappointing and disconcerting, but I'm not going to change my behavior. If somebody is making those assumptions, that is disappointing but their assumptions are their responsibility, not mine. And frankly, treating others as I wish to be treated takes precedence over treating others as they wish to be treated.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#108

Post by darksaints »

will4274 wrote: post #95
darksaints wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to dig past the abstract, crime is far more predictable by poverty rate than it is, or ever has been, by race. In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. But the racially segmented crime rates are higher because black poverty rates are higher. And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in h…

> In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. This is untrue. From my prior research, virtually every analysis concludes the opposite - that income alone cannot explain the difference in crime rate between black and white Americans. Most studies show income as 30-60% of that regression, which is huge, but when comparing similar income brackets, African American…

I don't doubt that you've found those statistics, as sociology is an incredibly difficult field from a methodology standpoint. Unfortunately there are problems with nearly all methodologies. There are two potential sources of the discrepancy in information here: how do you define crime, and how do you define poverty.

The definition of crime has a lot of data collection problems. Official crime rates are compiled by police reports, and if there is a bias in policing or prosecution, there will be a bias in reporting as well. There are methodologies that are used (all of which with their own problems that make them suitable for some analyses but not others) to allow for better analyses to be made. It is through these alternative methodologies that we can even make claims like "black people are twice as likely to be arrested than white people for possession of marijuana": pure collection biases hide the fact that black people and white people are consuming marijuana at similar rates.

The definition of poverty is also fraught, though not for systemic racism reasons. Poverty can be defined in relative terms or absolute terms. It can be based off of wealth, or it can be based off of income. It can be based on household income/wealth or individual income/wealth. It can be defined in terms economic mobility (the ability to change wealth over time), or point in time measurements. It can include social capital as well: some definitions of poverty take into account education availability, parental education levels, etc.

In fact, you mention single parent households, which is deeply tied to poverty. child abandonment rates have a strong inter-causal link with poverty: high poverty causes income earners to abandon their children, and children without income earners in the household not only live in higher poverty as a result, but are likely to perpetuate the poverty. And disparate policing certainly has its own contributors to poverty, because it takes parents away from children.

A good overview of the various methodologies and existing literature can be found here:

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_...

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#109

Post by handrous »

blueflow wrote: post #87
hairofadog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why criticizing BLM automatically makes something racist. It doesn't! Any social movement, no matter how just their cause, should be willing to accept valid criticism. However, when Person A says "look at this instance of systemic racism" and someone else replies "But MLK cheated on his wife!!", that's not arguing in good faith; that's commonly known as "whataboutism". [^1] > I searched about the Chicag…

> If you google for the exact phrase "google Chicago shootings", including the word "google" This thread is the first result for me. Not kidding. Could it be that you made it up that its a dog whistle? I'm doubting your good faith here.

There's a whole pile of twitterese phrases like this that are used to fly under moderation radar. Some refer to specific standard sections of Wikipedia's biographical articles in order to highlight that a person's Jewish, some are like this (that's why the "google" is important to triggering one's "this might be one of those things" alarms—a common pattern for these is directing people to look at another resource, using set phrasing)

Yes, seeing dog-whistles everywhere gets tedious (for all concerned) but the above is, unfortunately, a real thing. I'd be surprised to see it used with that intent on HN, though.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#110

Post by handrous »

will4274 wrote: post #95
darksaints wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to dig past the abstract, crime is far more predictable by poverty rate than it is, or ever has been, by race. In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. But the racially segmented crime rates are higher because black poverty rates are higher. And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in h…

> In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. This is untrue. From my prior research, virtually every analysis concludes the opposite - that income alone cannot explain the difference in crime rate between black and white Americans. Most studies show income as 30-60% of that regression, which is huge, but when comparing similar income brackets, African American…

Are population density factored in? My guess would be that a higher proportion of poor white people live in rural areas, compared with poor black people, and out in the sticks crimes are more likely to go unnoticed (you're less likely to get picked up painting or even shooting stop signs than tagging walls in a city, I expect) or to not happen due to lack of opportunity (what, you gonna go on a pick-pocketing spree at the Piggly Wiggly checkout line?)

(I'm not saying that's definitely what causes the difference to persist when income-adjusted, I'm just curious if you found that to be factored in, somehow, in the research you've seen)

[EDIT] I guess for international readers or US readers who haven't spent much time in the country, I should clarify that shooting street signs, mostly stop signs, is a (perhaps surprisingly) common activity in the rural US. You'll see lots of bullet-holes in signs if you drive around a bit in that kind of area. It's the rural equivalent of putting bumper stickers on the back of them, I guess.

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