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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

#451

Post by MrMan »

BoorishBears wrote: post #413
ipaddr wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#452

Post by abeppu »

> Blunt racial preferences will probably need to be replaced in response to the Supreme Court. But a less socially divisive system based on income could take their place.

This, and the "blind" part of the title seem really jarring to me. Would it be less socially divisive to, e.g. make sure that the incoming class came from families were more representative of the income distribution overall? Or would we have lots of indignant stories about the student with a high GPA who believes they were passed over in favor of a less credentialed lower income student?

I don't think Americans are at all "blind" to class. It divides our neighborhoods, it's signaled in the clothes we wear and the cars we drive and the vacations we put on instagram. Class highly visible everywhere. But we're so extremely well trained that wealth and privilege always go together. The idea of a policy which says to the wealthy, "you can have at most this much of the pie" is very foreign. If people accept that idea when the pie is college admissions, what next? The top 1% can be responsible for at most 5% of the carbon emissions? The top 5% can use at most 10% of the water in drought states? The top 10% can capture at most 30% of economic growth? I think a majority of people at every income level would see this as deeply un-American.

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

#453

Post by fknidiot »

mcguire wrote: post #394
Test0129 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I object to the use of "white privilege" on first principles: Interpreted literally, it implies all whites are privileged. This is categorically untrue. It encourages racism through associating an immutable trait with a negative word. "White privilege" is no more true than saying "Jewish privilege" or "Asian privilege" when referring to trends that do not reflect the whole. For the latter two one would be accused of…

" Consequently, there are more very disenfranchised whites who are probably experiencing the same, if not worse, conditions as others races. " I grew up white and lower middle class, but I've never been worried about being arrested hanging around my own house ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_contr... , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/0... , https://www.jsonline.com/s…

Do I need to post a list of articles showing white people being bashed, brutally raped, murdered, pushed under a train or even tortured by black people while they were: - being in their garden - going to their car - jogging - walking their dog - eating out at a restaurant

The absurd idea that whites are the ones brutalizing blacks in America is an extremely offensive joke.

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

#454

Post by notch656a »

BurningFrog wrote: post #304
notch656a wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still structural codified racism within US borders. For instance, it's illegal for non-native US nationals/citizens to own most property in American Samoa, in effect perpetuating racism against outsiders who are also US nationals.

This is why American Samoa prefers to remain a territory. They don't want to end up like Hawaii.

Hawaii's housing law that allows historically disadvantaged outsiders like the US-naturalized Filipinos who came in as cheap farm labor to actually OWN land are why half my family even has their own meager slice of property today.

Under American Samoan rules non-native minorities like blacks and filipinos are in effect excluded from property ownership rights of nearly all of American Samoa. I can't believe people here are effectively pro-racism in housing. Codified racism of property rights are not acceptable within US borders.

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

#455

Post by Manuel_D »

dragonwriter wrote: post #323
givemeethekeys wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires. I don't think affirmative action affects "sleeping their way to the top".

> Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires. No, it doesn’t.

By definition, it means some people were extended offers that would not have absent positive discrimination. Well, I suppose it could be the case that the level of positive discrimination didn't alter the outcomes, but then the affirmative action program achieved literally nothing.

At least, that's with the typical meaning of "affirmative action". It's a nebulous term that some use to encompass things like blind orchestra auditions. In the tech world this could be equated with anonymous resumes and blind zoom interviews with modulated voices. But few tech companies seem to be interested in this type of affirmative action.

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

#456

Post by yucky »

etchalon wrote: post #375
hotpotamus wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went down a bit of a rabbit hole and learned about "pre-code" Hollywood. There's actually a 1933 movie called "Baby Face" that features a woman who does basically sleep her way to the top of a company (despite being pre-code, it's still quite chaste by modern standards and much is left to implication, but it's not subtle). So the trope does indeed have some history.

The notion that the reason certain groups of people aren't taken seriously in certain roles is because of "D&I" or "AA" is flatly ahistorical. Certain people just refuse to accept certain groups of people are capable of accomplishment without outside help or uniquely uncommon circumstances. But every generation finds some excuse that their prejudices are "rational".

   Certain people just refuse to accept certain groups of people are capable of accomplishment without outside help or uniquely uncommon circumstances.
Sounds like the solution then is to remove that outside help, and thus all doubt. Right?

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

#458

Post by nradov »

scarby2 wrote: post #401
mancerayder wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it geographical or conscious of class, parental income and geography. That would go so much further in the goal of reducing inequality and increasing fairness than classifying people forcibly on something which we used to say wasn't a scientific classification, race.

> conscious of class, parental income and geography. This is going to be a pain in the ass and you'll just lead to people gaming the system. How about we just aim to make a high quality collage available to all who want it and extremely cheap and easy to finance so it's available to all?

High quality college should be available to all who want it and who are actually college material. There are a large fraction of college students who don't belong there and only matriculated to meet parental expectations or because they didn't know what else to do. As a taxpayer I am unwilling to finance this waste.

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

#459

Post by Manuel_D »

crackercrews wrote: post #443
Manuel_D wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, there may be even higher graduation rates among URM students in STEM fields - this is the claim of some recent research [1]. URM students have lower persistence rates[2] in STEM fields at most universities. Some claim this is due to racism, but the data shows that the persistence rates is actually the same for all races when normalized for academic preparedness. A student with 700s on their SATs is just as…

> They'll also probably save a lot of money, since changing majors partway through usually means that these students take 5 or 6 years to graduate. They would also graduate with a STEM major, which would likely enable more lucrative career options. > this is the claim of some recent research It looks like this working paper is over a decade old. Was it published recently?

I thought it was published in 2019 - apparently it was actually 2009. The author worked on a similar piece of research in 2016 and concludes that Bar pass rates would be higher without affirmative action: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/dropout.pdf

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

#460

Post by [deleted] »

MrMan wrote: post #446
fn-mote wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AA introduces this doubt Maybe. Every once in a while we have someone I consider an AA-only hire, but they don't stick around. OK, I'll be honest, the most recent one I was wrong - even though they lacked experience, they were clearly better than the (white male) person they replaced... and they're still here so I'm happy. I'm going to imagine a world without "AA hires". I think people still get judged based on the…

I dream of a world where people like you are not comfortably making such casual judgements about people like them but there is no justice in this world

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