It’s not ‘society’ that’s focused on race, it’s advantage-seeking politicians and journalists who live in a bubble that are. Race virtually never comes up in daily life for the rest of us…
Who is us?
American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
191–200 of 888 posts
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#192Somebody here on HN said something that I think perfectly explains my relationship with The Economist: they are right a lot of the time, but they are always really late with their takes. This is a perfect example of something that people have been saying for many decades, and it would have been a good thing to remind us of five or ten years ago. Now, I read it and I'm like "well... duh."
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#193How do you determine the class of student being admitted?
Many people have given answers to this very good question.
But I'm going to ask another: WHY does the admission process need to take into account the social class of the student?
- Fairness? College admissions at Ivy Leagues are not a fair process. It advantages legacies, donors.
- Diversity? Then why not also account for race or national origin too?
- An attempt to fix the inequities of US society? Why do this at the college level when 90% of the scars of a poor childhood are already set in stone? Why do it with a student class of only 5000? Why not admit 50,000 into Harvard each year then?
Ivy Leagues' admissions standards are designed to optimize one thing only: the prestige of the institution. That's it. That's why it has mostly rich kids but also a few poor ones to make it look like it's an egalitarian place. That's why it admits some black and brown students even if their SATs are not that high - so it can make it look like it's an institution that promotes racial justice.
Society should not look to Harvard and Yale to fix all its racial and economic inequity problems. Parents of Asian kids should not look to Harvard and Yale as the ultimate universal badge of academic merit - it's not. Harvard and Yale are going to look after their own interests - and it's all about prestige.
And yes I went to both an ivy league and state university. I know the game.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#194Earlier 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?
It's barely a dog whistle, but the obvious insinuation that sinister Jews are behind all the world's ills.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#195LMAO 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.
Please don't do snark or shallow dismissals or fulmination on HN. All that and more is in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .
My bad, sorry about that.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#196I've always loved how succinctly LBJ put it:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#197That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing... happens to work. You kn…
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Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
Using zip code could at least have a really interesting incentive towards de-segregating residential neighborhoods.
Highly motivated parents would have a reason to move into neighborhoods that they previously would not have lived in.
There's also a fraud incentive since it's not super difficult to pretend to live in a different zip code. Plenty of politicians do it.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#199The political parties use race because it divides people. They don't use class because they don't want what happened to the French Aristocracy to happen to them; they'd rather have the proletariat fight amongst themselves than to target the "real problem." In the US rich black people, hispanics, and asians are just like rich white people...but with different decor. Actually I prefer rich white people, because they do…
Gross
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#200Yeah, I agree that it is important to take into account disadvantages that people may have unfairly experienced due to no fault of their own. But, why do we need to use race as a proxy? Presuming something about someone based on their skin color is prejudice regardless of your intentions. If people are disadvantaged, let's measure those disadvantages directly and adjust for those factors.
> But, why do we need to use race as a proxy? Because historically race was used systemically to limit opportunities for people of color. The last school to be desegregated was in 1963. Think about that.
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