Snowflakes in action: the actual reality of "snowflakes" in the world and the consequences

[TomC]

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

So you had a third rate realtor. Sorry you picked a second rate agency.

But that's not redlining. Insisting that your fake redlining is evidence for systemic racism isn't just a little off. It's evidence sufficient to convince me that your opinions about racism aren't credible. It's like listening to someone explain that humans can't have evolved from monkeys because there are still monkeys.

It's not even wrong.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My real inheritance I've long since gotten.

My parents were huge on education and committed relationship and self reliance and service and family ties and a raft of stuff that can't be deposited in a bank account. That's my real inheritance.

Yeah, they popped for a lot of tuition. And when I started my business, I knew that no matter how badly it went I wouldn't be homeless. (Having to move back in with them and their advice and rules and such was marginally better than couch surfing.) But what they gave me wasn't the money, it was their culture.

Based on media reports, I believe that my parents gave me more than Ivanka Trump's parents gave her.
Tom

This. It's not the inheritance of money that matters.

My wife actually in a sense comes from money--but it's all gone courtesy of the Cultural Revolution. She actually got attitudes & education but in a sense negative inheritance (we were helping her parents in their last years.) I got attitudes and education and some money later in life--but we were already settled in our lives, it's a bit of security but did not otherwise change us. The only inheritance I got at an age it could make any difference was a small amount from my grandmother. And note that neither of my parents even got education from their parents. (And note that my parents had me late--if they hadn't waited I would have been substantially older when I got that money.)

This is the reality of inheritance--for most people it has basically no effect on their lives. The most important thing that's "inherited" is cultural, with education being definitely second. To actually inherit money that matters is rare.

We hear about the Ivanka's and the Paris' of the world, but they are a tiny, tiny minority.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sounds like a lot of intergenerational transfer of wealth. Just because it doesn't happen at the end doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

And just because it didn't come in cash doesn't mean it didn't happen either.

The important thing is the attitudes--and those don't cost.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Correlation does not prove causation!

The top line on that chart has no apparent racial cause but has obvious cultural causes. Why do you assume the other lines must be racially caused?

Correlation does not prove causation!

Unresponsive. The real median household income for blacks has been half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades. Why?
(HINT: not because correlation doesn't prove causation)

You say I was being unresponsive--but you failed to quote the part of my message that addressed what you're asking about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The effects of Black Lives Matter protests

Research shows places with BLM protests from 2014 to 2019 saw a reduction in police homicides but an uptick in murders.

www.vox.com

For 2014 to 2019 BLM protests are associated with about 300 fewer police killings--but 1,000-6,000 increased murders.

So, a ballpark estimate is BLM kills 10x as many as they save.

I understand the difference between correlation and causation.

The extra deaths show up in the cities with BLM protests. Pretty hard for it to be unrelated.

I note that your own link states

While Campbell’s research does not encompass the events of summer 2020, George Floyd’s killing

which means it literally does not support the Trausti's claim.

Agreed--I was addressing the general issue of BLM causing black deaths, not the specific claim about 2020.

I understand the difference between correlation and causation.
Again, from your own link

From 2014 to 2019, Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters. His main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers — roughly 300 fewer police homicides — in census places that saw BLM protests.

Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests.

Finally, that study is basically and "event" study - it looks for possible disparate effects by comparing before an event and after the event.
So, why do you think that this disparate effects proves anything when you consistently deny that disparate effects cannot prove discrimination?

When you have disparate effects you look for what might be causing them. With the racism issue the "researchers" continually fail to consider whether it's socioeconomic in nature. If you think this is effect isn't related to policing then suggest an alternate hypothesis that can pass the laugh test.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The effects of Black Lives Matter protests

Research shows places with BLM protests from 2014 to 2019 saw a reduction in police homicides but an uptick in murders.

www.vox.com

For 2014 to 2019 BLM protests are associated with about 300 fewer police killings--but 1,000-6,000 increased murders.

So, a ballpark estimate is BLM kills 10x as many as they save.

This directly contradicts the Vox article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2

You still fail to comprehend blasphemy. Your article is not a refutation at all.

There have been times it's appropriate--old standards that have little to do with actually doing the job, and old standards that don't really imply someone is unsuitable (for example, possession of personal quantities of pot.) However, mostly it has resulted in inferior hires.

Really. You believe that the only way that women, black people, Hispanic people, Native American people, Asian people were hired is because they.....lowered standards?

Thank god there is no more racism.

No. Lots of them have been hired legitimately. But when you're trying to meet diversity targets you generally end up lowering standards. (And note that "Asian" does not belong on your list and "women" only belong on it in a few professions with substantial physical fitness requirements.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Don't blame us, blame yourself. If you didn't push diversity admits and diversity hires the credentials would not be suspect in the first place. You're playing monday morning quarterback--think you can change one thing without there being secondary effects.

If anything in our world isn't white and male, it is assumed by too many that it is on some level, suspect or wrong. Movie casting, job employment, elected officials, judges.

Because quotas have been a thing for a long time. Get rid of the quotas in all their guises (while the racists kept using contrived schemes to favor white males the diversity crowd keeps using contrived schemes to disfavor white/Asian males--things like top 10% of high school class is just as discriminatory as things like 5'8" requirements to keep out women or high school diploma to keep out blacks) and the distrust will go away in time.

You can decree that people get in, you can't decree that people not see that they are diversity hires.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the fact that the real median household income for blacks has been half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades is not due to racism, what is it due to? Something wrong with blacks?

Correlation does not prove causation!

The top line on that chart has no apparent racial cause but has obvious cultural causes. Why do you assume the other lines must be racially caused?

Oh. Blacks are culturally inferior. I wonder why. Nothing to do with slavery, redlining or any other treatment meted out to them by whites, to be sure. Of course not. That's just correlation, right?

It's not all blacks. It's that we have a large mass of people living in the inner cities that have big problems. As things turned bad the good people mostly fled and any population that suffers heavy emigration turns to shit. This group is very disproportionately black and drags down the average.

At one point three of our four immediate neighbors were black--and none of them had the cultural problems I'm talking about. (Since then one couple has moved to California, one moved to a one-story, then a nursing home, then the grave, the last moved to assisted living, her mind was going and we have lost touch.)

 

[TomC]

When you have disparate effects you look for what might be causing them. With the racism issue the "researchers" continually fail to consider whether it's socioeconomic in nature. If you think this is effect isn't related to policing then suggest an alternate hypothesis that can pass the laugh test.

This.
If you start with the assumption that everything bad that happens to a black person is the result of white people and their racism, you're not going to help fix problems that aren't racially based. Or even the ones that are.

Even if some problem is caused by residual systemic or institutional or casual racism, lumping every problem black people have together isn't going to get to the root of any problem at all.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

Note that "good schools" will favor Jewish neighborhoods.

But F you for deciding I failed by NOT stating I didn't want a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't care if the neighborhood was Jewish or Arab or Asian or Catholic or Protestant or Hindu or what. It was highly unlikely that she would have steered us towards houses in predominately black neighborhoods given the other assumption she made. We are obviously not black. I cared that we had at least 3 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, and a good school district.

I have never gone house-hunting without telling the realtor what part(s) of town to look at.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, leftists appear to believe that. Rightists appear to believe it happens a fair amount. Both sides have an axe to grind; I'm not impressed by either side's objectivity on this point. But I don't think it's a coincidence that this controversy blew up at the same time as the Covid epidemic. For the first time, children were getting lessons by Zoom, so for the first time, parents were hearing at first hand what teachers were telling their children. Something ticked them off about it. And if what they were ticked off about was history being taught objectively and factually and SB 148 was intended to put a stop to that, then the legislators wouldn't have put in a clause specifically saying objective and factual teaching of history doesn't qualify as discrimination.

We have two huge triggers for this:

1) The rise of Trumpism.

2) SB8.

While I would consider other factors these are plenty adequate to explain this crap.

 

[Toni]

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

Note that "good schools" will favor Jewish neighborhoods.

But F you for deciding I failed by NOT stating I didn't want a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't care if the neighborhood was Jewish or Arab or Asian or Catholic or Protestant or Hindu or what. It was highly unlikely that she would have steered us towards houses in predominately black neighborhoods given the other assumption she made. We are obviously not black. I cared that we had at least 3 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, and a good school district.

I have never gone house-hunting without telling the realtor what part(s) of town to look at.

Cool beans. We gave broad parameters for location because we did not care about the predominate ethnicity of our prospective neighbors. It actually never occurred to us that this was an issue.

 

[Toni]

If the fact that the real median household income for blacks has been half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades is not due to racism, what is it due to? Something wrong with blacks?

Correlation does not prove causation!

The top line on that chart has no apparent racial cause but has obvious cultural causes. Why do you assume the other lines must be racially caused?

Oh. Blacks are culturally inferior. I wonder why. Nothing to do with slavery, redlining or any other treatment meted out to them by whites, to be sure. Of course not. That's just correlation, right?

It's not all blacks. It's that we have a large mass of people living in the inner cities that have big problems. As things turned bad the good people mostly fled and any population that suffers heavy emigration turns to shit. This group is very disproportionately black and drags down the average.

At one point three of our four immediate neighbors were black--and none of them had the cultural problems I'm talking about. (Since then one couple has moved to California, one moved to a one-story, then a nursing home, then the grave, the last moved to assisted living, her mind was going and we have lost touch.)

^^racist attitudes in action^^

 

[laughing dog]

I understand the difference between correlation and causation.
Again, from your own link

From 2014 to 2019, Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters. His main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers — roughly 300 fewer police homicides — in census places that saw BLM protests.

Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests.

Finally, that study is basically and "event" study - it looks for possible disparate effects by comparing before an event and after the event.
So, why do you think that this disparate effects proves anything when you consistently deny that disparate effects cannot prove discrimination?

When you have disparate effects you look for what might be causing them. With the racism issue the "researchers" continually fail to consider whether it's socioeconomic in nature.

You cannot have it both ways - either disparate effects are legitimate evidence or they are not. You are engaging in special pleading - disparate effects are not evidence when it disagrees with my bias but are evidence when it supports my bias.

 

[Metaphor]

I'm sorry that you are having difficulty understanding the study.

As for redlining not being real? I think I've written here that some years ago, when we were looking to buy our first home in another city/state, we were being shown houses in a particular neighborhood because the relator assumed we were Jewish. That's one form of redlining. We weren't harmed by it. We didn't mind being perceived as Jewish and would have purchased a home in one of those neighborhoods if we could have afforded one (we were outbid). But once we cleared up that we were not looking for a Jewish neighborhood (something she assumed---we never suggested), other neighborhoods suddenly were opened up to us. And we found a nice house we could afford in a neighborhood with excellent schools and a relatively diverse population.

But I'm sure you will believe what you want to believe and disregard... data.

I see no racism. The agent tried to select homes she thought you would want. You told her the pattern was wrong, she adjusted.

I see LP is living up to the thread title.

You wanted snowflakes in action?

You got snowflakes in action.

You tell the agent what you're looking for. When you don't they are going to make a guess that very well might be wrong. This is Toni's failure, not the agent's.

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

The agent made assumptions based upon the fact that we had given our children fairly traditional names that also happen to be found in the Old Testament. Also the New Testament. I'm not sure if she assumed we were Jewish because.....my husband is an academic with curly hair or because I have dark hair/dark eyes and at various times, have been assumed to be Jewish, Arab, Italian, Catholic although I'm none of those things. Note: no one who is actually Jewish or Arab or Italian has ever taken me for being of those ethnicities. Just WASPs
mostly.

The agent made an error based on....frankly I am only guessing her assumptions were based on our kids' names and that only because one of my husband's colleagues asked if we were Jewish and said they wondered because we named our kids .....perfectly common names that are also found in both the New and Old Testaments.

BTW, we ended up with a nice 4 bedroom 1 & 1/2 bath home in nice neighborhood in a diverse family oriented neighborhood which was served by the same excellent school district our children attended while we were renting. Some of our neighbors were Jewish. Some were Arabic, some were Asian, and a couple were black but most were white. I was really sorry to leave that house/neighborhood when we relocated for my husband's job.

But F you for deciding I failed by NOT stating I didn't want a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't care if the neighborhood was Jewish or Arab or Asian or Catholic or Protestant or Hindu or what. It was highly unlikely that she would have steered us towards houses in predominately black neighborhoods given the other assumption she made. We are obviously not black. I cared that we had at least 3 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, and a good school district.

I find the very idea of a real estate agent choosing suburbs for a client bizarre in the first place.

I have bought an apartment and a townhouse in the city I live in, and I decided what areas I was interested in first, based on having lived in the city already and the proximity to work.

 

[Toni]

That won’t be true until black lives do matter.

Who said they don’t?

Everyone who points out that all lives matter—while ensuring that white lives matter more.

You are basing this on a flawed premise. BLM is protesting a fairly small cause of black deaths based on some bad math.

Oh, bullshit. EVERYONE knows that police are not the biggest cause of the death of black people. But anyone who is willing to look at data can see that police kill too many people, period. Too many of those killed are not armed. Disproportionately, they are not white.

The number that are not armed is small--and it can be perfectly justified to shoot someone who is not armed. The standard example is when the person is trying to take your gun. BLM has a poor record of picking cases to champion.

Even if you hate black people, you should want police to do a better job avoiding killing people. A bunch of the people they kill are white. The SAME policy and procedures changes that prevent unarmed black people from being killed by police will do the same for white people. We ALL benefit.

We are ALL harmed when we cannot trust our safety or our communities to the protection of police. We are ALL harmed if police are not trained better to avoid shooting at anyone! ALL of us.

The data says the police killing fewer people translates to more dead people.

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

So you had a third rate realtor. Sorry you picked a second rate agency.

But that's not redlining. Insisting that your fake redlining is evidence for systemic racism isn't just a little off. It's evidence sufficient to convince me that your opinions about racism aren't credible. It's like listening to someone explain that humans can't have evolved from monkeys because there are still monkeys.

It's not even wrong.
Tom

Actually she was a great realtor. She helped negotiate the price abs other very favorable conditions, gave us the name of an excellent home inspector who did a fantastic job and also saved us a couple of thousand dollars and helped us through the first time mortgage application process.

What we did not realize was that in that area, redlining was very very common. So was sorting people into certain categories. Note my husband’s coworker made the same assumption about us being Jewish.

We found it rather shocking. We had moved back to the Midwest after my husband finished grad school, from grad housing which was incredibly diverse and located in an incredibly diverse /international neighborhood. We had not realized that this was such an anomaly. I had thought that I left most racists behind when I left Indiana.

 

[Elixir]

Correlation does not prove causation!

The top line on that chart has no apparent racial cause but has obvious cultural causes. Why do you assume the other lines must be racially caused?

Correlation does not prove causation!

Unresponsive. The real median household income for blacks has been half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades. Why?
(HINT: not because correlation doesn't prove causation)

You say I was being unresponsive--but you failed to quote the part of my message that addressed what you're asking about.

You do not say what causes the 2:1 ratio, you only point out that part of the chart doesn’t identify racism.

 

[Toni]

I'm sorry that you are having difficulty understanding the study.

As for redlining not being real? I think I've written here that some years ago, when we were looking to buy our first home in another city/state, we were being shown houses in a particular neighborhood because the relator assumed we were Jewish. That's one form of redlining. We weren't harmed by it. We didn't mind being perceived as Jewish and would have purchased a home in one of those neighborhoods if we could have afforded one (we were outbid). But once we cleared up that we were not looking for a Jewish neighborhood (something she assumed---we never suggested), other neighborhoods suddenly were opened up to us. And we found a nice house we could afford in a neighborhood with excellent schools and a relatively diverse population.

But I'm sure you will believe what you want to believe and disregard... data.

I see no racism. The agent tried to select homes she thought you would want. You told her the pattern was wrong, she adjusted.

I see LP is living up to the thread title.

You wanted snowflakes in action?

You got snowflakes in action.

You tell the agent what you're looking for. When you don't they are going to make a guess that very well might be wrong. This is Toni's failure, not the agent's.

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

The agent made assumptions based upon the fact that we had given our children fairly traditional names that also happen to be found in the Old Testament. Also the New Testament. I'm not sure if she assumed we were Jewish because.....my husband is an academic with curly hair or because I have dark hair/dark eyes and at various times, have been assumed to be Jewish, Arab, Italian, Catholic although I'm none of those things. Note: no one who is actually Jewish or Arab or Italian has ever taken me for being of those ethnicities. Just WASPs
mostly.

The agent made an error based on....frankly I am only guessing her assumptions were based on our kids' names and that only because one of my husband's colleagues asked if we were Jewish and said they wondered because we named our kids .....perfectly common names that are also found in both the New and Old Testaments.

BTW, we ended up with a nice 4 bedroom 1 & 1/2 bath home in nice neighborhood in a diverse family oriented neighborhood which was served by the same excellent school district our children attended while we were renting. Some of our neighbors were Jewish. Some were Arabic, some were Asian, and a couple were black but most were white. I was really sorry to leave that house/neighborhood when we relocated for my husband's job.

But F you for deciding I failed by NOT stating I didn't want a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't care if the neighborhood was Jewish or Arab or Asian or Catholic or Protestant or Hindu or what. It was highly unlikely that she would have steered us towards houses in predominately black neighborhoods given the other assumption she made. We are obviously not black. I cared that we had at least 3 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, and a good school district.

I find the very idea of a real estate agent choosing suburbs for a client bizarre in the first place.

I have bought an apartment and a townhouse in the city I live in, and I decided what areas I was interested in first, based on having lived in the city already and the proximity to work.

It was a large metropolitan area. I had no desire to live in any large city. We asked for northern suburbs, good schools, 3 beds. We had a very small budget. We couldn’t afford to buy in the suburb we were renting in. We only found that rental because a friend’s sister lived in the area and she knew we had a kid starting school and wanted good schools. We looked for rentals in a number of suburbs/neighborhoods and found the tiny place we rented mostly by luck. And got the place because I was much nicer abs better mannered than the guy who also wanted the place. Honestly, I had one weekend, two children, including a baby, a case of mastitis and the kindness of a friends sister and a tiny budget. This was before the days of the internet. Calling up places to rent from 500 miles away and saying that you had 2 children was not a great strategy, as it turned out. It was just too big an area fir me to have any idea where to start: hence the friend’s sister being so helpful. I was able to narrow down the area we wanted to look because she said: you want this or this or this school district. And we started from there.

By the time we were looking to buy, I knew I wanted to stay in the sane school district but didn’t expect to. Most people with children choose the area they house hunt by school district and sometimes by school boundaries within school districts.

 

[Toni]

I'm sorry that you are having difficulty understanding the study.

As for redlining not being real? I think I've written here that some years ago, when we were looking to buy our first home in another city/state, we were being shown houses in a particular neighborhood because the relator assumed we were Jewish. That's one form of redlining. We weren't harmed by it. We didn't mind being perceived as Jewish and would have purchased a home in one of those neighborhoods if we could have afforded one (we were outbid). But once we cleared up that we were not looking for a Jewish neighborhood (something she assumed---we never suggested), other neighborhoods suddenly were opened up to us. And we found a nice house we could afford in a neighborhood with excellent schools and a relatively diverse population.

But I'm sure you will believe what you want to believe and disregard... data.

I see no racism. The agent tried to select homes she thought you would want. You told her the pattern was wrong, she adjusted.

I see LP is living up to the thread title.

You wanted snowflakes in action?

You got snowflakes in action.

You tell the agent what you're looking for. When you don't they are going to make a guess that very well might be wrong. This is Toni's failure, not the agent's.

What we told the agent is that we wanted a 3+ bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood with good schools that we could afford.

The agent made assumptions based upon the fact that we had given our children fairly traditional names that also happen to be found in the Old Testament. Also the New Testament. I'm not sure if she assumed we were Jewish because.....my husband is an academic with curly hair or because I have dark hair/dark eyes and at various times, have been assumed to be Jewish, Arab, Italian, Catholic although I'm none of those things. Note: no one who is actually Jewish or Arab or Italian has ever taken me for being of those ethnicities. Just WASPs
mostly.

The agent made an error based on....frankly I am only guessing her assumptions were based on our kids' names and that only because one of my husband's colleagues asked if we were Jewish and said they wondered because we named our kids .....perfectly common names that are also found in both the New and Old Testaments.

BTW, we ended up with a nice 4 bedroom 1 & 1/2 bath home in nice neighborhood in a diverse family oriented neighborhood which was served by the same excellent school district our children attended while we were renting. Some of our neighbors were Jewish. Some were Arabic, some were Asian, and a couple were black but most were white. I was really sorry to leave that house/neighborhood when we relocated for my husband's job.

But F you for deciding I failed by NOT stating I didn't want a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't care if the neighborhood was Jewish or Arab or Asian or Catholic or Protestant or Hindu or what. It was highly unlikely that she would have steered us towards houses in predominately black neighborhoods given the other assumption she made. We are obviously not black. I cared that we had at least 3 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, and a good school district.

I find the very idea of a real estate agent choosing suburbs for a client bizarre in the first place.

I have bought an apartment and a townhouse in the city I live in, and I decided what areas I was interested in first, based on having lived in the city already and the proximity to work.

Cool. We were not from the area originally. We were relatively new and had no fixed attachment to any neighborhood or suburb.

We listed our parameters. There were at least a dozen suburbs on the side of the major city where my husband worked. We were not particular about which suburb. We couldn’t afford to be very picky because we had a tiny budget. That knocked several suburbs out of our price range, including the one where we were renting, which we knew heading into the market. We didn’t want a longer commute. We wanted good schools, 3 bedrooms, more than one bathroom. Cheap. That still left a broad range of places to look.

Once she learned we were not Jewish, more neighborhoods were opened up for available houses.

 

[Metaphor]

Once she learned we were not Jewish, more neighborhoods were opened up for available houses.

The behaviour is weird, but will surely be less and less important as people search for their own prospects online.