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6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

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Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#151

Post by rayiner »

erydo wrote: post #120
rayiner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using name is a reasonable way to optimize figuring out someone's race. The question is: why are we trying to figure out someone's race? If you're talking about reducing effort, isn't the easiest thing to just not ponder the question of someone's race? People wouldn't bother to try and answer that question if they didn't care about what the answer was. Now, the fact that people care is not in and of itself evidence o…

That's roughly right in a moral sense, but in a Bayesian sense I don't think it's unreasonable. If race (or background or country of origin, etc.) and some attribute (education, wealth, etc.) are correlated, and names and race are correlated, it's intuitive that names and that attribute are likely correlated. It's a huge problem when you reverse the process and say, "Despite evidence of having X attribute, I'm going…

Nobody meets you and says: "While it's reasonable, in a Bayesian sense, to conclude that someone with a 'black' name like mine grew up in a low-income, low-education household, in fact both my parents have graduate degrees and are high-income professionals."

A lot of those assumptions that people make, while statistically justified, will never be rebutted in individual instances because it's socially impractical to do so.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#152

Post by leephillips »

hyperpape wrote: post #105
nashequilibrium wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit, I've heard white ppl talk shit about Jersey Shore and use racial slurs against Italians. Secondly look at the Silicon Valley numbers for diversity, how many Asian vs Black? So your point no black interaction == no asian interaction is incorrect.

Regarding minority populations: it's not equivalent. But it is often the case. Think Texas, New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago. People talk shit or joke about the French, Italians, Germans too, but French and German people are considered white. Same with Poles and Italians. Those stats you gave did not consider people of Italian or German descent as non-White.

At the moment, throughout the U.S., Italians are considered "white". In the recent past, in certain areas of the country, they (Southern Italians, at least) were considered "black". They were lynched and not allowed to marry "whites". Racial categories are ever-shifting social constructs that serve temporary political and social purposes.

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-...

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#153

Post by commandar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95
commandar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, I can kind of understand the point he's getting at. Similar issue: I worked with someone via email for several months thinking they were female because their name is Kim before a coworker mentioned "uh, pretty sure Kim's a dude." You run into similar issues with e.g., women named Chris. I don't think being thrown by situations like that makes anyone look like an idiot. Looking at it from an ethnic p…

> Ideal world, sure, we wouldn't make assumptions about identity based on names. But it happens. I'm not sure that there is an answer that'd make everyone happy, to be honest. Of course we would, unless in the ideal world names would be uniformly distributed among population in a completely random way. But they're not. The only problem here is seeing reasonable inference from a known probability distribution as ethic…

>Of course we would, unless in the ideal world names would be uniformly distributed among population in a completely random way. But they're not.

That's essentially the same point I was getting at.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#154

Post by commandar »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #118
TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideal world, sure, we wouldn't make assumptions about identity based on names. But it happens. I'm not sure that there is an answer that'd make everyone happy, to be honest. Of course we would, unless in the ideal world names would be uniformly distributed among population in a completely random way. But they're not. The only problem here is seeing reasonable inference from a known probability distribution as ethic…

Wasn't meaning ethics, just the risk of looking silly over time. If you tend to make a lot of assumptions about someone just from their name before encountering them, then you are pretty much guaranteeing that you are going to get burnt a lot over time, unless you don't meet many people, as it simply isn't that good a guide.

I guess the point I disagree on is that I don't see it as getting burned. If you treat people differently based solely on their name, sure, that can cause problems.

For me when I'm mistaken, it's just a matter of making note of it and moving on. Not a big deal.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#155

Post by yodsanklai »

the8472 wrote: post #129
kaa2102 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We are blind to our blindness." Where do the generalizations stop?

As others have mentioned, we generalize all the time. We have to. No single stone is like the other, and yet we we talk about stones and pebbles like they were some uniform set of platonic ideals and some sharp boundary separating one from the other. We lack both knowledge about each individual and the capacity to hold all detailed information of all individuals in our heads to not shove them into categories. Of cour…

> So as long as your generalizations are statistically sound (instead of outdated stereotypes) they are useful and should only stop once better information becomes available.

I agree with that. However, in certain cases, it's called discrimination and it's illegal.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#156

Post by vfa33 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #145
happyscrappy wrote: post #30

Silicon Valley is a ridiculous festering pool of hypocrisy. Instead of trying to train and hire underprivileged blacks from right next door, Oakland, they fly or outsource them from half way around the world in India. Yet they think they are liberal and caring because they upvote stories like this.

Why should highly privileged blacks be favored over underprivileged Indians? http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... (Note: privileges the black Oaklandians were born with include the right to work in the US, a highly functional education system where teachers show up to work, 24/7 running water and power, etc.)

No doubt that your average Indian experiences a greater degree of poverty than your average Oaklandian, but that isn't the only factor in privilege. Can you imagine what it does to a child when they see someone get shot in the street outside their house, or get their home raided, or lose family member(s) to incarceration / murder / drug addiction? It's a different kind of struggle, and I wouldn't be so quick to say that one group is more or less privileged than the other.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#157

Post by laichzeit0 »

maxerickson wrote: post #106
laichzeit0 wrote: post #72

"In a high school soccer game I was called 'a white man with a [horrific racial expletive deleted] name.'" Horrific racial expletive. That seems a bit... excessive? Let's elevate the horrificness of this word to the point where if someone utters it they get fined or jailed. That should teach 'em. People are so ultra-politically correct these days I'm too scared to open my mouth for fear of offending someone, saying s…

The placeholder was chosen in the context of a relatively personal, informal group blog: http://thepoetryquestion.com/about/ If you think your sexist, racist, white male privileged, fat shaming thoughts are important to voice, I don't see why you would worry about them offending someone. The motions of political correctness can go too far, but the basic thought, to consider what words might mean to someone else, is a…

This type of hyped up placeholder is _exactly_ an example of political correctness gone too far. It's exaggeration. My argument is not even against purposefully using words that are offense. It's about how there are so many words that are deemed offensive today that I can't even keep track of what they are.

For example, calling one of my own non-homosexual friends a "faggot" or "gay" is offensive. Even though I'm not homophobic and personally find it to be a funny, playful insult.

I may or may not be factually correct about this, but in general (I use the word general here in the sense of more than 50%) of those offended seem to be minority groups. I.e. homosexual, African Americans (this is easily to confirm by census results in a country), Semitic groups, etc.

The issue seems to be whether we should give up the ideal of not offending people as there exists no such fundamental right not to be offended.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#158

Post by beachstartup »

foldr wrote: post #117
beachstartup wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, if you're actually black, then you can't escape racism just by changing your name. no shit sherlock. but changing your name to a neutral sounding one, no matter what your race, will get you in the door at a much higher rate, where you are actually able to present yourself and your abilities instead of having your resume, application, submission, or email summarily tossed in the trash for no reason o…

Changing your name might help, though it's sad that anyone should have to do this. I was replying because you (a) seemed to be missing the OP's point and (b) were coming close to blaming victims of racial discrimination for not changing their names.

it's sad? really?

no, it's sad that ww2 happened. it's sad that there's still starving people in the world. it's sad that there's human trafficking in 2015.

what's not sad is someone crying over the fact that some people are prejudiced against certain names when the easy solution is to just change your fuckin' name if you deem it to be a problem.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#159

Post by beachstartup »

vfa33 wrote: post #149
foldr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing your name might help, though it's sad that anyone should have to do this. I was replying because you (a) seemed to be missing the OP's point and (b) were coming close to blaming victims of racial discrimination for not changing their names.

It's absolutely victim blaming, not just coming close to it. Of all the backwards and ridiculous comments I've seen on race-related threads here, that one is really exceptionally stupid.

there's basically two kinds of people in the world.

those that will sit around and mope and moan about how unfair the world is, and invent terms like 'victim blaming'.

and those who take concrete, actionable steps to overcome or work around the problem.

don't fucking fool yourself, nothing will erase the prejudice against certain names in the next 50 years. just ask any american who isn't white. they've had to deal with this shit from the very beginning, it's not an abstract textbook concept to them.

Re: 6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'

#160

Post by yummyfajitas »

vfa33 wrote: post #156
yummyfajitas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should highly privileged blacks be favored over underprivileged Indians? http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... (Note: privileges the black Oaklandians were born with include the right to work in the US, a highly functional education system where teachers show up to work, 24/7 running water and power, etc.)

No doubt that your average Indian experiences a greater degree of poverty than your average Oaklandian, but that isn't the only factor in privilege. Can you imagine what it does to a child when they see someone get shot in the street outside their house, or get their home raided, or lose family member(s) to incarceration / murder / drug addiction? It's a different kind of struggle, and I wouldn't be so quick to say t…

Personally I feel that "privilege" is an ill-defined concept and should be ignored by intelligent people. I've never seen a concrete definition that a proponent of privilege was actually willing to stand by.

(E.g., people show me this essay http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html to explain "white privilege", then rapidly shift the goalposts once I point out that every point applies to me when I live in India.)

I suppose you are right that the relatives of drug addicts, murder victims and criminals might have more problems than others. But then why is happyscrappy talking about black people in Oakland rather than the children of junkies?

Note that India has junkies, criminals and bad parents too. In addition to having bad parents, the children of Indian junkies are also legally barred from working in the US (unlike, e.g., an Oakland child of junkies). It's true that Indians are less murder-happy than Oaklanders, but they have all sorts of other traumatizing events (e.g. rampant eve teasing, a high rate of traffic fatalities, multi-day water cuts).

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