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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

#201

Post by dymk »

cauthon wrote: post #126
TimTheTinker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"White privilege" is like a DSM-5 diagnosis. It's only brought up with a treatment (or remedy) in mind. It's intended more as a tool to bring about a particular outcome, and less as a description of a scientifically measurable reality. I don't object to the use of "white privilege" to attempt an objective description of reality. I do object to the notion that more discrimination on the basis of race is the answer. Yo…

> You don't solve a structure fire by adding gasoline. Do you refuse the insurance payout after a structure fire because it'd be unfair to the neighbor whose house didn't burn down?

it would certainly be unfair to prioritize an insurance payout on the basis of skin color, to bring your analogy back into the realm of sanity

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

#202

Post by scotty79 »

kareemsabri wrote: post #138
scotty79 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos for one. He specifically bought newspaper to massage the image of billionaires like him. I don't think he's beneth that tactic given that Amazon has huge employee rotation by design because they haven't anticipate running out of people.

How do you know this?

I know nothing.

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

#203

Post by lemmsjid »

throwaway23597 wrote: post #5

LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.

Whenever I hear these totalizing opinions I do some searching. The NYT has published an imperial ton of articles on class in the last several years. About the effects on income inequality, on how wealth inequality is now at its highest since WWII, a breakdown of guaranteed income programs by city, a synopsis of a study on poverty reduction, a synopsis of De Blasio's mixed successes and failures on addressing New York income equality, how the effects of New York heat weaves are worse for poorer people...

I think the 'upper class' has a lot of influence, but it clearly isn't stopping the NYT from giving enough information to readers to build some pretty strong opinions on the effects of class in the United States. Journalists are clearly spilling a ton of ink over it.

I think the blame must be spread more broadly. There is a tremendous anti-socialist, anti-labor force in American discourse, and parts of the media are helping to drive it, but other parts are resisting it. And regardless of its provenance, it is quite entrenched in the day to day, non-journalist culture.

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

#204

Post by geoduck14 »

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…

The top 10% of the good high schools don't go to University of Texas

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

#205

Post by juve1996 »

kube-system wrote: post #188
juve1996 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, why do we need to use race as a proxy? Because historically race was used systemically to limit opportunities for people of color. The last school to be desegregated was in 1963. Think about that.

I know why many minorities have (/still do) faced disadvantages. I am not questioning the problem, I am questioning the solution.

That's a pretty straightforward disadvantage. The only solution is to make public schools accept people of color. There's no other way around that. If you don't, they won't.

What we're dealing with now is the legacy of those decisions. They made sense in that context but the context has changed.

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

#206

Post by scotty79 »

ironSkillet wrote: post #150
scotty79 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And only by sheer accident this newspaper started publishing articles praising billionaires like him and their endeavors (like private space race).

Private space enterprise is exciting and legitimate news, is it not?

Of course!

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

#207

Post by briHass »

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.

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

#208

Post by scotty79 »

rippercushions wrote: post #171
scotty79 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And only by sheer accident this newspaper started publishing articles praising billionaires like him and their endeavors (like private space race).

I don't think they were particularly successful in that, there was quite a bit of backlash about billionaires blowing millions of dollars on useless vanity projects so they can fly to space on giant space dicks: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/20/jeff-bezos-r...

> there was quite a bit of backlash

Not from Washington Post though.

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

#209

Post by Retric »

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…

Ivy’s core issue is they want to use racially biased metrics for admissions like “did your parents go here?” which could be illegal. But they don’t want to admit that those metrics could possibly be illegal when defending their racial metrics to correct for that issue.

Assuming they lose the case things will get interesting.

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

#210

Post by Beltalowda »

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.

Isn't it though? I think that's the point: a well-off or even rich black kid from two black lawyers or doctors or whatnot is being favoured over a poor white kid from a (former) coal mining community in West-Virginia. The number of university openings, job openings, grants, etc. are all finite in number, so there is some amount of "competition" involved.

And you can talk about statistics and averages and whatnot all day, but once you start applying averages to individuals – which is essentially what "positive discrimination" or "affirmative action" amounts to – you're always going to be wrong in a very substantial number of cases.

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