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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

#671

Post by Akronymus »

DeathArrow wrote: post #627
worik wrote: post #581

For some of us (me included) living in a racist society is like a fish swiming who does not notice water. I only noticed when I became intimate with a person from a minority race and saw how they were treated. That is when I noticed I live in a racist society. I love the economist. Their writing is so good, they are biased but know it, and acknowledge it. Biased, but not bigoted. nYet this article misses the point, I…

>For some of us (me included) living in a racist society is like a fish swiming who does not notice water. And what was the society answer to racism? More racism but directed towards groups that were deemed "offenders". Somehow, some people decreed that thare is "bad" racism and that there is "good" racism. That there is "bad" discrimination and that there is "good" discrimination. This is obviously false and we shou…

"Good" racism is breeding resentment and thus more bad racism.

Reminds me of a certain quote... "Every animal is equal, some are just more equal than others".

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

#672

Post by Akronymus »

dendriti wrote: post #389
cuteboy19 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point being racial discrimination is acceptable so long as there is some plausible deniability

Can we just stop with these bullshit word games? I'm so tired. Describing a form of legal discrimination (in this case, affirmative action) as "racial discrimination" is not an argument. Or even an invitation to discussion. There are major problems with policies like affirmative action. But smirking and saying "But... but you said racial discrimination is BAD! But then you DO THE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. So YOU BAD!" i…

> Can we just stop with these bullshit word games? I'm so tired. > Describing a form of legal discrimination (in this case, affirmative action) as "racial discrimination" is not an argument. Or even an invitation to discussion.

To me, your second sentence seems more like word games than calling it racial discrimination is.

Sure, I can somewhat rationalize it as not being intended to be racist. In the end AA still results in treating people different based on race. Which, to me, fits the textbook definition of racism.

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

#673

Post by Akronymus »

jessaustin wrote: post #369
strken wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 18 I filled out the section of the form for rural applicants (in the Australian university system), but with the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd left it blank. I'm 95% sure that I would have made it anyway yet the 5% doubt is unpleasant.

Why does this bother you? Do you assume that the system is perfect, except for this particular benefit you believe it provides to rural applicants?

I assume it's a reocurring thought that maybe the commenter you replied to only got in because of the standards being lowered.

Which is something I have heard of from quite a lot of people who may have benefitted from AA. And it's somewhat frequently paired with a huge amount of self doubt.

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

#674

Post by soco »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #603
Tozen wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. The problem with your statement is that affirmative actions is not based solely on race, so it appears that you are attempting to or have mistakenly fallen into perpetuating an offensive myth that the main beneficiaries of it are Black/Hispanic. The group that has benefited the most from affirmative action are White/Non-Hispanic women. White Women and Affir…

We agree on the big picture but not the details. Instead of race, why not look at economic position? I think the white family living in poverty in rural Appalachia is probably more deserving of AA than the middle-class Black family in Atlanta today. If there's a kid with a lower GPA/SAT than my son, but he's worked throughout HS, didn't have the same resources we have, he deserves acknowledgement and assistance. Coll…

Are we sure that we wouldn't have the exactly same discussion in that situation? Because your son would be - again - pushed aside, just by a different underrepresented group.

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

#675

Post by belorn »

purephase wrote: post #487
cuteboy19 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing my point entirely. In many of the oral arguments for this case the Harvard lawyers insisted that race based affirmative action is ok because race is a factor among many . Implying that if it was the only factor then it would not be ok. So theirs is not a principled defense of affirmative action but rather based entirely on plausible deniability

You keep throwing "plausible deniability" around, thinking that is what is happening here. You're assuming that the decision is someone selecting a candidate solely based on their race, when it is far far more nuanced than that. For Ivy's, the pool of candidates is so unbelievably large to available spots, that they look at hundreds of different data points when evaluating candidates, and they weight certain ones hig…

In an other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33446363) we see how simply changing race on the application from Asian to Black/Hispanic increases a person chances of getting from 4-8% to 60+%. If there is hundreds of different minor data points, but then a single major data point called race that dominate all the other minor data point, then it doesn't matter that there is hundreds of minor data points.

How strong a bias is is relevant in case of discrimination. If race changes a person chances by over 12 times then that is a very major bias.

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

#676

Post by soco »

Akronymus wrote: post #670
Tozen wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are seeing the historical context. Race is very much a part of it. America had to overcome slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, etc... These were based on race, not economic position. Affirmative action is an attempt to rectify the long standing American issues of discrimination based on race and other attributes (sex, color, etc...). Economic position or being at an economic disadvantage is a different ar…

From what I understood of your comment, a black person in a rich neighbourhood should get preferential treatment over a white person in a poor one? Because historically black people were mistreated? What if white people are, in the future, treated as second class citizens, should AA then be for white ones? IMO using racist policy to fight racism is just not going to end well.

Ideally yes, the economic situation should be taken into account as well. But what's the use of enforcing this at college level, when for underprivileged kids (any kind - wrong race, low class, bad neighborhood) the ship of chances sailed away already when they couldn't get through a proper primary school? The OP situation will happen again and again, kids with lower scores will get pushed ahead so the average "smartness" of that school will decrease. Because what is good for one individual can be detrimental in general, and what is positive in general can be detrimental for one individual. Just about any policy will have holes through some people will fall, and even if I propose a quality education starting from grade 1, I'm sure some people will point out somebody getting a hit from it.

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

#677

Post by hardware2win »

runako wrote: post #571
duvenaud wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I believe there is belief that Harvard is accepting C-students over asians A+ students I think the reality is much closer; they are rejecting students with perfect scores and accepting students who scored in the 98th percentile. You don't need to speculate, the gap is more like 99th vs 93rd percentile: "Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 767 across all sections. ... African-Ame…

> You don't need to speculate, the gap is more like 99th vs 93rd percentile: This is easily the gap between a single individual on two different test days. Which is another way of saying that the difference is not useful in assembling a university's incoming class. Once you get above a certain level, the tests decrease in utility to categorize individuals into tiers. Once you get to a certain level of capability, you…

>This is easily the gap between a single individual on two different test days.

Skill difference between top 1% and top 7% is huge in ELO based games

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

#678

Post by dools »

ETH_start wrote: post #480
dools wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Involuntary unemployment is the single biggest cause of poverty in developed economies and is a policy choice, not a limitation

Even if we levelled all wealth, life would be limited by the finiteness of resources, and only economic development - which this levelling would inhibit - would alleviate such scarcity. Consider what would have happened if society had followed John Stuart Mills' advice in 1848 and maximized for equal distribution of income, resulting in per capita GDP barely increasing from its $2,000 level over the last 170 years: "…

Eliminating involuntary unemployment doesn’t require levelling of all wealth, it just sets the floor price for labour and maintains a buffer stock of employed people ready to be hired rather than a buffer stock of unemployed people who are less ready to be hired.

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

#679

Post by Akronymus »

soco wrote: post #676
Akronymus wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understood of your comment, a black person in a rich neighbourhood should get preferential treatment over a white person in a poor one? Because historically black people were mistreated? What if white people are, in the future, treated as second class citizens, should AA then be for white ones? IMO using racist policy to fight racism is just not going to end well.

Ideally yes, the economic situation should be taken into account as well. But what's the use of enforcing this at college level, when for underprivileged kids (any kind - wrong race, low class, bad neighborhood) the ship of chances sailed away already when they couldn't get through a proper primary school? The OP situation will happen again and again, kids with lower scores will get pushed ahead so the average "smart…

In my opinion, a possible solution would be to get rid of district based funding for schools and instead fund schools mostly based on student amount. One problem of that model is that it can result in teachers avoiding certain schools because that school having a bad rep and thus that school having to pick worse teachers.

Another solution I could see working is making it much easier for students to go to other schools than the default one assigned to them. Altough, that runs into issues of areas where there isn't any "wealthy" school nearby.

I get that it's an incredibly difficult problem to solve and that, tbh, I don't really have much of a clue how to solve it either. So the best I can do is throwing ideas at the wall to see what is workable, while opposing policies I see that I deem to be actively harmful.

Thinking more about my ideas, I think there is a link, altough can't really argument that one atm, behind "no child left behind" and "bad" schools getting worse.

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

#680

Post by hardware2win »

eru wrote: post #342
jupp0r wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is not to create ever more complicated adjustments but to make sure that all children get great education (and nutrition) from early childhood, even if they are disadvantaged at home. Rolling it up from the other side by giving top college spots to kids who were disadvantaged in the first place never made sense to me.

You are assuming that education makes a difference? And that someone (the government?) can provide that 'great education'?

This whole thread is mostly about getting into college

So yea, the consensus is that edu, knowledge and exp make a difference

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