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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#381

Post by vitus »

rayiner wrote: post #297
vitus wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more factors to systemic racism than just worse economic outcomes, so it's naive to assert that only black people experience its negative effects. Immigration comes to mind, where profiling is rampant in enforcement (but only really for people who look Mexican, not for people who look / sound Canadian). Or even immigration quotas -- there's the same annual green card cap per country, whether it's India or C…

> There are more factors to systemic racism than just worse economic outcomes, so it's naive to assert that only black people experience its negative effects. In the US economic disparities drive pretty much everything else. > Immigration comes to mind, where profiling is rampant in enforcement (but only really for people who look Mexican, not for people who look / sound Canadian). As a brown guy with a beard, maybe…

(Thanks for the very detailed response.)

(Immigration quotas are a weird one -- on one hand, you want to keep all the H1B visas from going to the mega-consultancies like Tata or Infosys that end up not paying very much, but on the other, of the 18 most populous countries, US is at #3, Russia is at #9, and the rest are outside of Europe. It's probably not racism! But at the same time, it does limit immigration from these larger countries which disproportionately skew Asian in favor of smaller countries that skew white. Europe is split into roughly as many countries as Asia, despite having a sixth of the population!)

I mean, affirmative action as a wedge issue for Asian Americans is already in place, whether it's achieving proportional representation or not -- the premise is that there are already higher admission standards at elite universities for Asian Americans than even whites (see: Harvard lawsuit). I agree with you there, that on the face of it, when taken in isolation, affirmative action is bad for Asian Americans! At the same time, you know which group is really under-represented at Harvard and would benefit from proportional representation? Non-hispanic whites (with "only" 40% of the student body, versus 60% of the US population).

I'm honestly curious to what extent the stats on median household income or whichever metric(s) you're using to gauge economic parity are skewed by the tendency of Asian Americans to concentrate in high cost-of-living urban areas. For instance, it's not a fair comparison to say "oh, Asian Americans who disproportionately live in NYC / SF make more than the median white American who lives in Wisconsin".

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#382

Post by username90 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #303
wsc981 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism? Racism of course. Since it’s selecting people based on race. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In theory but there is effectively already in many cases greater affirmative action for white people already. Lets look at Harvard as a case study. 43% of white students at Harvard are legacies, athletes, or related to staff and 75% of these 43% wouldn't have been admitted on merits. Around 1/3 of white people at Harvard are there because of effectively white affirmative action. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s…

I have nothing against moving the entire college admission over to be anonymous test based. Progressive people doesn't like it though.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#383

Post by TheCoelacanth »

reasons wrote: post #337
lazide wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that most of the founding fathers were far from religious people (especially Christian religious), and the whole church and state separation thing was there from the beginning because about the only religious thing anyone could agree on was generally A god (and depending on the founding father that was controversial) - not the specific flavor/interpretation of the god? Unlike some European states, the Uni…

Hand wavey? The US was founded by entire colonies of people coming overseas to worship the Christian God freely. Many key founders were deeply religious; believing all forms of government are doomed without the help of the Christian God. The Christian God was a huge factor in government and repeatedly credited as the guiding force and inspiration for the entire endeavor. Christian prayer and Bible reading was a publi…

> The US was founded by entire colonies of people coming overseas to worship the Christian God freely

That's the source of some of the colonies. There were many other reasons that people came.

Some were looking for economic benefit. Some were prisoners that their home countries were looking to get rid of.

> Christian prayer and Bible reading was a public school item until the mid 1960s

Until the 1960s, but starting in the 1940s or 1950s. Much of that public religiosity was a response to the Cold War, opposing the anti-theistic position of the USSR.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#384

Post by lazide »

reasons wrote: post #337
lazide wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that most of the founding fathers were far from religious people (especially Christian religious), and the whole church and state separation thing was there from the beginning because about the only religious thing anyone could agree on was generally A god (and depending on the founding father that was controversial) - not the specific flavor/interpretation of the god? Unlike some European states, the Uni…

Hand wavey? The US was founded by entire colonies of people coming overseas to worship the Christian God freely. Many key founders were deeply religious; believing all forms of government are doomed without the help of the Christian God. The Christian God was a huge factor in government and repeatedly credited as the guiding force and inspiration for the entire endeavor. Christian prayer and Bible reading was a publi…

All with different interpretations of the Christian god (or not Christian, as in the Jewish diaspora). The Spanish who settled colonies in Florida and California, the French in Louisiana, the English, Polish, and German settlers in Jamestown would all struggle to agree on a common set of definitions or rituals except there was a bible in there somewhere.

I was led in prayer at public schools, and private - doesn’t mean I or most of the other students were religious, though some were. And that is a very recent thing. Most regions didn’t have public school bible reading then.

You seem to be making a statement that the US has some strong theocratic religious foundation, when it’s more of a ‘we’ve got too many competing groups that can’t get along with each other - we’ll just kinda stay out of it where we can’. Hence the hand waves part. Which is good, we’ve never had the religious wars where a specific group had to fight against another, which is how you end up with the state religions like in Europe (anglicans vs Catholics vs Protestants for instance).

The groups you’re pointing to were often refugees from those fights and came in as waves during the various periods of repression as tides turned, or different regions fell to famine.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#385

Post by speedcoder »

JamesBarney wrote: post #200
breakyerself wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean really. Do you really think that if someone who's unsuccessful because of laziness that if only they hadn't heard about systemic racism they would have a better work ethic? The laziness comes first. The excuse is crafted after the fact. If it wasnt that they'd claim to have some other disadvantage or problem.

A lot of psychotherapy is convincing individuals that they are in control of their actions and can decide how they react to and influence their environment. A lot of what we're teaching now is the opposite. It's like anti-CBT. Teach everyone they are helpless against the nefarious powers that be.

What is CBT?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#386

Post by ne0flex »

speedcoder wrote: post #385
JamesBarney wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of psychotherapy is convincing individuals that they are in control of their actions and can decide how they react to and influence their environment. A lot of what we're teaching now is the opposite. It's like anti-CBT. Teach everyone they are helpless against the nefarious powers that be.

What is CBT?

Cognitive Behavior Therapies

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#387

Post by Klinky »

strangeattractr wrote: post #328
Klinky wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the west being founded on slavery, and genocides while sustaining racism and misogyny for hundreds of years. I hear a lot of "head in the sand" thinking. If we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist and never happened.

Doesn't it feel somewhat hypocritical to accuse others of having their head in the sand whilst claiming slavery, genocide, racism and misogyny are uniquely western phenomenon? I think the irony of the self-loathing westerner, is that in believing their history is uniquely evil, are practising a sort of white supremacy. Not only in being completely oblivious to the history of other parts of the world. But by believing…

No, because "other people did horrible things too" isn't a valid excuse.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#388

Post by Klinky »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #350
Klinky wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly, if you want to narrow it down to North American history, compared to some other countries, NA was rather slow at coming to terms with these issues, and compromises were made over the decades which propped and continued institutionalized racism, bigotry, and misogyny, which have had lasting effects to this day. Also saying it's a universal humanitarian problem doesn't make it "not a problem" or victimless…

Of course there will be localized differences, and scale differences in civilizations that scaled more. Also, realizing that it is a universal human problem helps with pointing the finger inwards rather than outwards.

Inward to whom? Every human? Isn't that just as "vague" and unfair to blame even the slaves for their slavery?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#389

Post by listless »

livinginfear wrote: post #243

I always considered the current culture of cultivated-victimhood to be rooted in the manner Western people fundamentally define themselves by their triumphs against adversity. In the absence of real adversity, people seek and create surrogate adversity for themselves to triumph over. From this process they can rationalise themselves as having the inner-strength to overcome such barriers.

This might be the most insightful comment I’ve seen on this issue.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#390

Post by listless »

Klinky wrote: post #319
swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, slavery is alive and thriving in today's world. You'll see most of it in developing nations where enforcement is non-existent. Rich nations still occasionally have trafficking busts, but nowhere compared to the scale and industry of some more equatorial countries. It's estimated that there are 38-46 million slaves worldwide. In absolute numbers there are more enslaved people now than there ever has…

Is this supposed to excuse the consequences of the past? What is your point exactly? Even much of global human trafficking leads back to forced labor, exploited by major western corporations through obfuscated supply chains.

In that case, I certainly hope you don’t own an iPhone, don’t buy things on Amazon and only shop local where you check all the labels for “Made in MY country”.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that there isn’t any moral high ground here.

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