American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by duvenaud » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #395

duvenaud wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not in STEM departments, no. Why would you run a pro-male affirmative action programme in a department where men were already over-represented? But there's affirmative action for men in nursing, teaching, social studies, and similar female-dominated departments. There are active campaigns to recruit more male nurses - and male teachers are more likely to be promoted. I also know first-hand that vocational ballet scho…

Thanks for providing more context. However, the original claim I was reacting to was that "half the population ... [are] beneficiaries of affirmative action", i.e. that all men in college are beneficiaries of AA. I agree there are exceptions, but I stand by my claim that very few college-attending men benefit from AA for males.

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

#412

Post by duvenaud » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #410

michaelt wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in STEM departments, no. Why would you run a pro-male affirmative action programme in a department where men were already over-represented? But there's affirmative action for men in nursing, teaching, social studies, and similar female-dominated departments. There are active campaigns to recruit more male nurses - and male teachers are more likely to be promoted. I also know first-hand that vocational ballet scho…

> if you find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action for female-dominated jobs only provides low-paid, low-status jobs - then feminists are very much in agreement with you about the unfairness of the situation :) This is an interesting point, how much of the salary is determined by presumably impartial market forces, and how much of it is just status and social signalling. We know status and social signalling…

>We also know that the diffrence between salaries of rank and file staff and C-suit executives have increased 15x in the past 20 years, without any corresponding increase in productivity

Seems like evidence against the claim that status plays a significant role in setting salaries, unless their status has also increased massively in that time.

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

#413

Post by BoorishBears » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #376

BoorishBears wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'll no longer be looked at as diversity hires Only racist losers assume I'm a diversity hire. And I'd actually rather they seethe at the "diversity hire" who just happens to somehow magically drive high-impact projects at every company he's ever worked at culminating in a career that's seen him work on everything from some of the most used apps in the world to self-driving cars. For that particular brand of los…

This isn't a movie I don't think anyone is seething or really cares. They may look at you and wonder where you rank, so it forces you to prove yourself. But in this industry every interview wants you to prove yourself in pointless ways regardless if you have 20 year or 1.

> This isn't a movie I don't think anyone is seething or really cares.

If you think people who assume minorities are diversity hires only exist in movies I'm not sure if you're naïve, clueless, or both.

> They may look at you and wonder where you rank, so it forces you to prove yourself

I mean you want to tell yourself no one cares, but you also want to say that removing AA forces me to prove myself? (actually that's just a really vaguely written sentence, removing AA? or being black? what is "it"?)

Why do white people get so uncomfortable at the thought that other whites can be racist? I didn't say you think of me as a diversity hire, I didn't say any majority of white people think of me as one either, yet you immediately feel the need to start throwing yourself in front of the bullet with statements like "this isn't a movie".

Is this some sort of cognitive dissonance from the people who have these thoughts deep down or something?

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

#414

Post by SamPatt » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

I'm not really bothered by a handful of elite universities which are only attended by wealthy and connected people.

Why is this a problem? Other schools exist which are accessible to people without wealth and connections.

The colleges can let in whoever they want or don't want. We don't need all of them to be an accurate representation of society at large. Plenty of other institutions in society are also not representative - churches, companies, sports teams - and that's just fine.

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

#415

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

MichaelCollins wrote: post #407

jessaustin wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of districts here in Missouri that have decided to make lunches (and breakfasts!) free for everyone in elementary and junior high school because the percentage of low-income families is high enough that that ends up being cheaper than wasting resources on means testing and collections. Regardless of how wealthy her parents are (or how difficult it is for her parents to fill out forms), you can't just n…

> you can't just not provide lunch to e.g. a 7yo who lost her money. Right, and they don't. I forgot my lunch money frequently as a kid. The school always fed me anyway, after taking down my name to have a chat with my parents (to inquire if I needed to be signed up for free lunches, and to collect the debt since my parents could easily afford it.) They won't let you skip lunch.

Sure, but you're describing a complication that doesn't exist if the district just feeds everybody. I'm not saying that this is always the right decision for a particular district, just that many districts outside California have made it.

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

#416

Post by insightcheck » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #105

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…

People regularly get treated differently due to their race. Effects happen when applying to jobs and also interactions during traffic stops. From Canadian research for the first [1]:

"Job applicants with English-sounding names have a greater chance of getting interviews than those with Chinese, Pakistani or Indian names, a new study by University of British Columbia researchers suggests. The study found Canadians and landed immigrants with names such as "Jill Wilson" or "John Martin" are 40 per cent more likely to be offered an interview than someone with a name like "Sana Khan" or "Lei Li," given an identical resumé. Applicants with mixed names like "Vivian Zhang" had a 20 per cent better chance to land an interview than job-seekers with non-English names, but still less than the English-only names."

For US research for the second [2]: "Blacks were 63 percent more likely to be stopped even though, as a whole, they drive 16 percent less. Taking into account less time on the road, blacks were about 95 percent more likely to be stopped. Blacks were 115 percent more likely than whites to be searched in a traffic stop (5.05 percent for blacks, 2.35 percent for whites). Contraband was more likely to be found in searches of white drivers."

On HN discussions on racial issues, there is often at least one comment that asserts that people get equal treatment due to race, and any contrary reports are fabricated. My only request is for people to try to practice humility, and at least consider the idea that one's personal experience of life may not be shared by everyone else's (for the rationalist crowd, at least consider that statistical studies should have more weight than beliefs formed from one's personal experience, where n=1).

[1] https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/06/racial_disparities_traffi...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/job-applican...

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

#417

Post by abeppu » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

briHass wrote: post #207

etempleton wrote: post #110

Part of the American dream is that the feeling that there is no rigid social class. Everyone is a millionaire down on their luck. You only need to work harder or be more clever—ideally both. To some extent, it is true. Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. Race in America, however, is fraught. The history of racism is rece…

> Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. You state that like it's a bad thing. If you can bump a bracket or two per generation, 2 generations can take you from near-penniless to upper-middle class.

But the stats seem to show that it's substantially less common in the US than in a bunch of other developed countries, including countries that literally still have monarchs. A "Global Social Mobility Index" doesn't even put the US in the top 20. It looks like if you consider fathers in the bottom income quintile in Sweden and the US, the Swedish father's son is roughly 75% more likely to make it to the top quintile than the American, and the American's son is 68% more likely to remain n the bottom quntile than the Swede. That's a pretty big difference.

If we value class mobility enough to talk about the "_American_ dream" maybe the US should actively work on improving that.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index...

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

#418

Post by scarby2 » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

627467 wrote: post #310

etempleton wrote: post #110

Part of the American dream is that the feeling that there is no rigid social class. Everyone is a millionaire down on their luck. You only need to work harder or be more clever—ideally both. To some extent, it is true. Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. Race in America, however, is fraught. The history of racism is rece…

> Part of the American dream is that the feeling that there is no rigid social class. Everyone is a millionaire down on their luck. You only need to work harder or be more clever—ideally both. Recently I have been thinking in this vein too... This "American dream" is such a repeated cliché that some may think it's just that: a cliché in the minds of even Americans. But my current hypothesis is that many (most) Americ…

> But my current hypothesis is that many (most) Americans actually believe it.

I certainly believe that there is no rigid social class in America and it's definitely possible to move between income brackets with relatively little social stigma. In the UK for example no matter how much money a working class person makes they will never become upper class. Never be welcomed into the top social circles etc., they didn't go to the right schools (pre-college) or dont have the right accent...

I'm not as blind to believe that parental wealth doesn't matter hugely. I also wonder if it might be more difficult to move income brackets in the USA due to the extremely high cost of education.

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

#419

Post by Manuel_D » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #350

Manuel_D wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 report…

Both of your examples (linkedin profile & census response) are the very definition of self-reported. Once they become a measure that has negative consequences for your childs college admission, they will stop being as accurately self reported. Further - a single social network is not an objective measure. You are conflating income & assets. Income is generally hard to hide, assets is much easier. Income is reported t…

No, distinguishing between the 30%, 55% and 70% is not really relevant. It's mostly about distinguishing the top 5-10% from the rest of the applicant pool. As per the article:

> A study published in 2017 found that most of Harvard’s undergraduates hailed from families in the top 10% of the income distribution. Princeton had more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%.

It is not nearly so simple for someone in the top 1% to try and pretend to be part of the bottom 60%. Their home address alone would usually be enough to mark them as upper income. Work history is not so easy to hide or fabricate. The government has employment records, and people need to disclose their work history to get future employment.

Separating the 30%, 55%, and 70% isn't really relevant. All of them are lower-class in the context of university admissions. Furthermore, these people wouldn't have the means to hide their assets, and they wouldn't even have that much assets to hide. The median net worth in 2019 was just over $120k [1]. For these people, you mostly just look at income.

1. hhttps://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/saving-and-b...

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

#420

Post by partiallypro » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

IMO, this is by design and why politicians and media types play to race instead of class. Because if middle/lower class Hispanic, Black and White people figure out they have a lot more in common with each other than their rich counterparts, it would not be good for the current status quo.