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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

#281

Post by sokoloff »

closeparen wrote: post #257
andirk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brilliant and accomplished people don't always pursue wealth. In certain subcultures it's crass, uncouth, one might even say low class to pursue something too practical or employable, to be too interested in material things and conspicuous consumption. These people aren't rich on paper but they are rich in genetics, habits, attitudes, values, vocabularies, media diets - and they raise brilliant, accomplished kids. Af…

Is a random selection without regard to academic performance really a "[slot] in the meritocracy"?

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

#282

Post by dredmorbius »

bombcar wrote: post #60
teg4n_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure The Economist never attributes an author in their articles. The author is supposed to be “The Economist”

Same as Tyler Durdan writing all that stuff for Zerohedge iirc. It makes somewhat of a sense if you’re trying to disconnect the message from the speaker.

Or that dredmorbius guy on HN.

(Among numerous others.)

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

#283

Post by WillPostForFood »

zabzonk wrote: post #224
notright5 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not capitalist. They are sociologists / journalists / non-technical economists earning 50k (barely percentile 60), and telling us daily how action X is immoral (exactly what bishops and priests used to do).

oh come on! all are well known as being right-wing. and all of them are support organs for capitalism. i'm not saying there anything wrong with that - i enjoy reading both the ft and economist. and i like living in a basically capitalist society - the UK

are well known as being right-wing. and all of them are support organs for capitalism

If anyone who believes in capitalism is "right-wing", sure. But by US standards, these are center left publications (like unofficially Democratic party affiliated left, not Bernie/Socialist/Occupy left).

If you want to call them right-wing, show me an article critical of global warming, endorsing a republican besides Liz Cheney, or acknowledging Trump did at least one good thing (without caveats or apologies).

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

#284

Post by closeparen »

HWR_14 wrote: post #160
closeparen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great way to get a class full of front-line gentrifier families whose breadwinners are academics, journalists, artists, nonprofit staffers, political aides, social workers, etc. Class is not income, and finding the highest-performing kids from lower-earning families and neighborhoods is an almost perfect strategy for demonstrating the gaps. Of course that's my own background, so I'd take it!

Those of course aren't perfect proxies! We can add more factors to account for that. But it's a start.

Parental education level would be much better.

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

#285

Post by feet »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #269
feet wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the biological cause for the behavior of seeking any particular opportunity?

Having both a mother and father at home while growing up is one of the premier biological indicators of future success. Wealth helps, sure, but it's very easily lost if you grow up without perspective.

My point was this:

Is a cell deterministic? Is the physics on which cells operate deterministic? From my understanding, yes

What does that mean for neurons? Those must be deterministic, which means that the complex organisms which cells create are also deterministic. Their behaviors is entirely deterministic

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

#286

Post by Georgelemental »

okwubodu wrote: post #261

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and…

Women outperform men on GPA, SAT reading, and ACT humanities sections. Men do better on SAT math and ACT STEM sections

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

#288

Post by duvenaud »

okwubodu wrote: post #261

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and…

As a STEM academic, I can say that I've never seen or heard of ongoing AA for men in any STEM program in any institution whose policies I'm acquainted with. So it seems to me to be misleading to claim, or at least hard to believe, that very many men in college have been beneficiaries of AA for men.

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

nu11ptr wrote: post #35
dgs_sgd wrote: post #23

> For more than 40 years the court had allowed some positive discrimination I’m not a fan of the term “positive discrimination” at all. It tries to hide the fact that the “positive” effect to one group is necessarily at the expense of another. Whether it’s positive or negative just depends on which group we’re talking about.

Agreed, if you have a finite amount of resources and "positively" favor one group over another, this automatically disfavors another group. When skin color is used for this "positive" favor, we have a term for the impact on the other group: racism. Have we not learned that racism is ALWAYS bad?

[deleted]

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

#290

Post by Manuel_D »

steveBK123 wrote: post #169
Manuel_D wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you determine the race of a student? "Class" can be designated by objective measures like family income, whether or not parents are university graduates, etc. By comparison, how do you determine if an applicant is Black or Latin? Do you have them prove ancestry all the way back to Africa? Brazil is experiencing this issue [1]: > And that's when this story gets even more complicated. Because in order to "prove"…

Race is by definition self-reported, and is easily gamed, as recent high profile stories show. 1950s America everyone wanted to be white. 2020s America everyone wants to identify as something else. This should tell you how the incentives have inverted. Class is also easy to game and hard to define. And what is class - educational attainment, income, labor vs capital, all 3, 2 out of 3? How do you conclusively determi…

Educational attainment is pretty easy to judge. Parents almost certainly have linkedin profiles. Census data also asks for education attainment. Incomes and assets are also attainable via tax info. Sure, they can cheat on income taxes, but usually that's making $100M in assets look like $60M. Just based on address they can at least determine the value of your home. An applicant attending Deerfield Academy that reports a family of low income and no parental education is going to ring some alarm bells, and probably isn't going to pass muster.

We don't need to conclusively define class, but we can at least quantify it relative to other applicants. Is the plumber making $90k upper classic? We don't need to pin a label onto it, but we can say they're higher than someone making $40k a year and not as high class as someone making $500k a year.

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