Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 888 posts

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

#361

Post by MichaelCollins »

tstrimple wrote: post #306
acchow wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those missing context, I believe this is a reference to California high schools which provide free lunch to students (and I guess this doesn't happen in Texas...?)

California is the only state in the country with this policy.

Poor kids get free or reduced cost lunches in all 50 states, thanks to the National School Lunch Program. The income threshold is adjusted annually to account for changes to the CPI. Tens of millions of kids participate in this program every year.

California's innovation is giving free food to middle class kids then taking credit for feeding the poor kids.

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

#362

Post by tomohawk »

coyotespike wrote: post #187

Here in Texas, any student from the top 10% of their high school is guaranteed a place at the flagship University of Texas at Austin. This is widely understood to be a form of affirmative action. Naturally, high schools in underprivileged areas - rural or urban - will produce students who are nowhere nearly as prepared as students from elite or wealthy schools. We ignore that difference as a policy matter. Top 10% is…

I went to a state school that was a top 25 school at the time. The state did pretty much the same thing.

This was a disaster for the students who were top at their high school, but nevertheless not prepared to go to a top tier university because their high school was not a college prep school. They either flunked out or changed to majors they could scrape by in. They would have been much better off going to a community college for a year or two to level up first.

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

#363

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

ummonk wrote: post #104
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because class in America has always been fluid, with people going from poor to rich or middle class, and from rich to poor, based on their life decisions, and seizing opportunities. Perhaps the current events have strangled these opportunities for enough people so class can now be used to divide the population against itself?

An alternative explanation of decreasing class mobility is simply that an extended period of relatively high class mobility has left most people presorted into the class they belong in.

Increasing legal demands for entrepeneurs are a more likely explanation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/hair-br...

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

#364

Post by cuteboy19 »

alsaaro wrote: post #239

There is an error in the opening paragraph of the article, while it's true Trump added another conservative to the Supreme Court, prior conservative courts have always upheld the legality of affirmative action; indeed, every iteration of the Supreme Court has been conservative since affirmative actions inception. One would question why affirmative action was legal and constitutional just a few years ago, and as far b…

>In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concluded that affirmative action in college admissions is justifiable, but not in perpetuity: “We expect that 25 years from now [i.e. 2028], the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.”

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

#365

Post by cycomanic »

danenania wrote: post #46

Class can be a big part of racism--often what appears to be racism is really more about class. There are many people who look down on anyone they perceive to be "low class", regardless of race, and who will accept people of other races if they perceive them to be "high class". In areas where the lower classes are over-represented by racial minorities, this can look like racism, when classism is much more the culprit.

That misses how even being rich does not protect you from significant racism. Just look at the well documeted experiences comparing a white or black person driving an expensive car. The black person is multiple times more likely to get stopped by police.

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

#366

Post by PeterisP »

eru wrote: post #340
acchow wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those missing context, I believe this is a reference to California high schools which provide free lunch to students (and I guess this doesn't happen in Texas...?)

Couldn't you just give poor people money?

The kids which most need free lunch often come from families so dysfunctional that any money received would not be spent on feeding the kids.

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

#367

Post by feet »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #354
feet wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sufficiently complex systems take on a life of their own. A rock rolling down a hill is deterministic. That same rock rolling down the hill a thousand times, has a statistical distribution pattern.

That's ignoring the trees for the forest and saying that forest growth and death patterns are entirely inexplicable because the system is too complex.

Psychologists use statistical models because we lack the full understanding of the brain, but that doesn't mean that behavior can't be predicted if we did have a full understanding.

Saying that the rock rolling down the hill has a distribution pattern completely ignores complexity. Did it have the same exact starting point each time? How strong was the wind blowing and in which direction? Did a pebble move out of the rocks path from the last run?

If all conditions of the rock rolling down the hill are exactly the same that means that the rock will take the same path each time. Differences create that statistical distribution.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

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

#368

Post by ameister14 »

daxelrod wrote: post #351
ameister14 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you were replying to, but do you have positive associations with the word "privilege?"

My associations are mostly neutral. It can even be positive in certain contexts, like "It was a privilege to meet him".

Even then, it's not entirely positive, is it?

It's essentially saying 'It was an honor to meet him;' that could mean that you were undeserving, or simply that it was something unusual that most people didn't get to do; if it were common, it wouldn't be a privilege, would it?

In the thread's context, usually it's associated with not granting the privilege to someone else, as well - you have a privilege that others do not, one that you do not do anything to deserve.

I don't know about you, but I don't really believe that 'white privilege' is intended as a positive. It's intended to have a negative connotation, otherwise there would be no impetus for change.

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

#369

Post by jessaustin »

strken wrote: post #322
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…

When I was 18 I filled out the section of the form for rural applicants (in the Australian university system), but with the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd left it blank. I'm 95% sure that I would have made it anyway yet the 5% doubt is unpleasant.

Why does this bother you? Do you assume that the system is perfect, except for this particular benefit you believe it provides to rural applicants?

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

#370

Post by rippercushions »

bee_rider wrote: post #303
rippercushions wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uniquely, American Samoans are US "nationals" but not "citizens", which makes a whole lot of things very weird. I think we should just jettison the colonial baggage and hand the islands back to actual Samoa next door, but here we are.

So what do we tell those US nationals "become citizens of Samoa or become stateless," because that's obviously not a viable path forward.

The "US national" status is a legacy of the Insular Cases, and all the other cases formerly in this bucket have either gained independence (Philippines) or become full US citizens (Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands).

So in the hypothetical case that American Samoa is returned to Samoa, the logical options are to either make all American Samoans citizens of Samoa, or to give them the option to choose between Samoan and American citizenship. In either case the weird "national" status will cease to exist.

Post reply on HN