91–100 of 199 posts
If one's going to play the ethnic etymology game, why not start with the NPR staff's overwhelmingly Jewish surnames? Why is every chance for black/white/hispanic/asian/male-female grievance mined and exploited by NPR, but their own ethnic nepotism swept under the carpet? Why don't NPR's Jews judge themselves by their own standards?
It's really sad that somebody would come to HN just to push an antisemitic agenda.
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Every single person I worked with in Rocky Mount had spoken with Black people and worked with Black people. They lived on the same streets and their kids went to the same schools. And many of those white people who interacted with Black people every day were stunningly racist (and I should say many weren't). Maybe they categorized "different types" of black people. But they could hold a civil conversation, then turn…
"In fact, PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have "entirely white social networks without any minority presence." The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans." Now isolate the 14% black population from all minorities, take into account how minorities cluster and the 75% number is for black friendship is probably even higher than 90%
I guess, for me, I never associate the name Jamal with black - to me it is arabic like Gamal Abdel Nasser. Then again I was born and raised in South America, so Gamal was not a curious name. It was the name that my "white" brother was given to by my middle eastern dad!
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I think it's reasonable to assume that someone with a stereotypically black name is black It's easy to assume that. It really is a very rough guide though, so if you stick to it, don't be surprised if you end up looking like a complete idiot on several occasions throughout your life.
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…
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 ethically dubious.
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> But I'm confident that 99% of white Americans have spoken to a black person. I'm no more confident of that than in the 90% haven't made up statistic that this was offered in response to. The truth is probably somewhere in between (and may be closer to the 90% haven't side, especially if, as suggested in another comment, one excludes the minimal interactions around things like retail commercial transactions and the…
Eh, OP made a damn extreme claim. If you exclude extremely glancing interactions, I'd walk back the claim about 99%. But I will say that any place I've ever lived or visited, the majority of White people would have had conversations with Black people. I just can't imagine someone in Pittsburgh, New York City or Raleigh not having done that.
"In fact, PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have "entirely white social networks without any minority presence." The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans." Now isolate the 14% black population from all minorities, take into account how minorities cluster and the 75% number is for black friendship is probably even higher than 90%
Look at it another way 66% of black people say they do not have a white person in their social network. So roughly 34% of 14% of the population have a person in their social network from the white population. So how the hell can all these white people claim to have all these black friends?
Couple of off the cuff thoughts: Why can't people use the expression "niger" in context? It was clearly meant as a racial insult, and I think people need to remember that that is the way it is commonly used. Replacing it with a placeholder doesn't make racism go away or make the word less racist, all it does it soften the racism used in that instance. His TSA story is more likely fiction. Is he saying that there are…
I think names do trigger a lot of 'random' searches on their own. Whether by profiling by a computer that delegates to the TSA person or by that person if reading the ticket. My father when travelling in the US gets pulled out for random searches 4 out of 5 times when boarding. I would think a grey haired suited Scandinavian businessman in his 60ies is less likely search candidate by looks. But our family name has a…
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Ok, quick: see me as an individual. You have 5 seconds. Note: Don't draw any conclusions about me that are based only on what little you know about me. You cannot, eg, draw conclusions upon that fact that I have an account on Hacker News. You must see me as an individual .
I don't think the other people are at fault here. I think it's reasonable to assume that someone with a stereotypically black name is black, just like it's reasonable to assume that a random IT professor is male based on the fact that 90%* actually are. As long as you owe up to your error when you notice it (and e.g. apologize). It's a reasonable optimization that works out more often than not. The problem only start…
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…
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"In fact, PRRI's data show that a full 75 percent of whites have "entirely white social networks without any minority presence." The same holds true for slightly less than two-thirds of black Americans." Now isolate the 14% black population from all minorities, take into account how minorities cluster and the 75% number is for black friendship is probably even higher than 90%
Since i cannot respong to you below here is the updated numbers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/25/t...
Like I said in my original post, you're asking a good question. As far as I understand it, most people's stereotypes are not based on significant interaction with other people. They're picked up from other people who held those stereotypes.
It's just that I think you made a major exaggeration going along with it.
The sad truth I've heard people who were racist as hell say "they're just blaming that boy because he's black." They were capable of seeing someone as human in a particular instant, then turning around and uttering the most hateful things imaginable. They could talk to a black man civilly then turn around and talk about what "the brothers" do. Not having talked to black people wasn't their problem.