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American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

economist.com

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Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#131
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link contains an anti-semitic dogwhistle. Is this intentional?

In the racial representation of billionaires? What exactly is the dog whistle?

I think the part where they literally wrote out in plain text that wealth disparity is the fault of the Jewish people

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. A better article title would be: "American Media is Focused On Everything But What They Should Be (And Are Paid Well For It)" This is yet another example of how many of the elites live in a bubble. Well educated, yet oh so ignorant.

The Economist is a centrist British publication.

Americans can't seem to tell the difference.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#133
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geography and parental income would be good proxies.

Unfortunately, parental income can be a terrible proxy. High income doesn't necessarily indicate wealth or high class. It usually indicates highly educated, high level working class, like doctors and software engineers. Families with generational wealth often have very little direct income. All wealth is in assets that they borrow against, which doesn't count as income. Even when they take income or realize capital g…

Parental income is a terrible proxy? The abilities of ones guardians growing up is a huge factor in what opportunities someone is offered and a lot of that is dictated by how much money is available for the child. Other aspects like the intelligence, love, care, wit of the parents and child may be larger factors, but that's not something one can quantify on a form.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#134

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

> as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal

There's more to it than that. Intellectuals look at the parallels between race and class and see potential for "yes, and" solidarity; political professionals see the danger of splitting and confusing the limited mental space that non-professionals have for politics. A competing truth is worse than a lie. The time was ripe for significantly enriching the public understanding about race, and they were ruthless in not letting anything else get in the way. Their desires dovetailed nicely with the social media bullies (high school bullies grown up, or not grown up) who enjoyed the opportunity to indulge in their favorite pastime, shaming people into conformity. It's hard to balance political priorities; it's easy to denounce talking about class as a racist ploy to derail threats to white supremacy.

How you feel about the outcome depends on your expectations of people. I don't have high expectations. I think it's pretty cool that race has been getting the attention that it has.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#136

>Surveys show that majorities of African-Americans, Californians, Democrats and Hispanics all oppose the use of race in college admissions (and in other areas). This was surprising to me.

Why? Nobody wants to think their success was the result of an unfair arbitrary advantage.

Because it seems like the pro-affirmative action camp is strong. If most people are against it, who is supporting it?

Last year a geophysicist, Dorian Abbot, was invited to give a lecture at MIT about some new results in climate science. His invitation was rescinded because he had once criticized affirmative action in a magazine article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest...

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#137
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link contains an anti-semitic dogwhistle. Is this intentional?

I didn't make that infographic and I don't have another one without the bottom right part, but it would be weird to invalidate the whole point because whoever made it has said the taboo word. I also think that it's extremely stupid to blame "all Jews" for anything. But it's equally stupid to call "all white people" privileged, especially if we need to use 2 different definitions of "white" when arriving at the privil…

Let's face it. There's a reason why there's only one version of this information that suits your point.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of whom? Please don't vaguely hand wave about the .1%. Who specifically with means has had this goal? Because without any kind of evidence or idea of who is doing it, it just sounds like a conspiracy theory. I ask because whenever I see instances of the ultra rich trying to control the narrative, it always comes off as obvious and ham fisted. The obvious rebuttal is "well you don't see when they succeed", bu…

Bezos for one. He specifically bought newspaper to massage the image of billionaires like him. I don't think he's beneth that tactic given that Amazon has huge employee rotation by design because they haven't anticipate running out of people.

How do you know this?

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main rationale is that it is complicated. :-) Controlling for income doesn't work well, because whites at the same income level tend to have much more wealth than blacks at the same income level. Controlling for wealth, blacks still tend to poorer access to resources (clean water, prenatal care, etc...). It would be a great achievement if we could simply say that poor blacks were finally as well off as poor white…

I'm sure it is complicated. But these effects are well studied and I'm sure these institutions have plenty of sociologists that could help come up with some models that work at least as good as stereotyping based on skin color. The idea that generalizing based on race is just easier leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why do we tell racists that they shouldn't prejudge people based on race at the same time that people wi…

There was a study I saw as an undergrad that used all the standard factors and also used zip code -- and that worked surprisingly well to explain a lot of the differences. But using race rather than zip code, actually was still better -- and of course zip code may well have simply been a race proxy.

I think zip code though will likely be more satisfying to people. Although the conservative wing of the supreme court has already said that they don't like the top 10% rules for admission, so I suspect they'll also not be kind to zip code since the idea is similar in spirit.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#140

The Economist, FT and Bloomberg are obsessed with both race and class. Not content with the meager profits of economic reporting on a budget, they have become peddlers of social ressentment for a long while.

so the capitalist press are trying to foment a socialist revolution???
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