Nice Squirrel said:
I did, but much more important, I read some the actual research that your cited article dishonestly misrepresents for political purposes. Most points on the list are either false, half-truths, or when true do not show evidence of modern racism, but rather show the things like the greater criminality among blacks which by using other research can be inferred to have some roots in SES and cultural differences tied to generations of slavery and historical racism.
Like I said, I posted this for provocation. It has delivered.
It hasn't provoked much reasoned analysis on your part or on the part of anyone taking the list seriously as evidence of modern racism. It just provoked blind acceptance of anything remotely smelling like "evidence" for preconceived notions. That isn't something this board or the world needs any more of.
The OP article is poorly titled and sensationalist, but the studies themselves are worth the read.
Due to Salon's choice of how to frame this issue, people are getting riled up about being called racist. That's not what I got from actually looking at the studies referenced in the article.
Me neither, since most of the studies either don't show any evidence of racism or don't show that racism is any more prevalent among whites, especially those used to make the less common claims on the list. The article isn't actually poorly titled, because the content of the article is as false and full of misinformation as the title. As this thread shows, the article effectively serves it purpose of getting many people to blindly believe the claims and interpretations, despite lack of support from the research used to lend a false air of scientific credibility to what is really an ideological stance.
Instead, what I took away from them is that, as Louis CK once joked, I'm incredibly lucky to be a white male. Notice that I can acknowledge that advantage without saying white people, and only white people, are racist. As a mature adult, I can recognize a disparity without automatically interpreting it as an indictment of a person or group, even if that's what Salon wants me to think.
I appreciate that some of the studies/stats, even when not largely attributable to modern racism (crime stats), are still likely related to disadvantages for being black, such as being born into low SES that motives one to commit crimes than land one in prison. But these points are already well known, and many of the presented studies don't actually give any of the evidence needed to show that the "disadvantage" goes beyond being more likely to commit crimes that land one in prison. Also, it is actually liberal activists focused on racism that are the ones most likely to ignore such crime stats because they show self-inflicted harm more than they show modern racism, and pointing to historical racism as root causes doesn't serve the activists need to create a current living and breathing racist enemy against which they can act.
Also, the more novel of the studies do not show an advantage for being white. The first point is false. Among public college professors, Black females were treated the best, followed by Hispanic and White females, then black, Hispanic, and white males were all treated equally, with Asians being given the fewest responses. The pattern is inconsistent with typical white-racism, thus Asians being at the bottom is more likely due to either assumptions that the student is a foreign non-citizen, or to liberal academics seeking to favor blacks and Hispanics over Asians, who they see as already over-represented in college and generally doing well on their own.
The second point on the list is misleading and also does not show an overall advantage for being white, because competent research that doens't focus just on whites shows that each race gets advantaged by their own. Also, one set of studies showed that whites are assumed to experience more subjective pain from an injury, because they are assumed to be weak and soft due to their privileged life. That empathy research does not show that its good to be "white", but at most shows that its good to be in a racial majority and good that most other people around you are not non-white, because then the advantage would flip toward whatever group was the majority.
Even though a general notion of "its better to be white in current US society" is valid, this OP list does little to make a good case for it, and does more to spread false ideas and misinformation about the related research and what it shows. It matters that people are being misinformed that white males seeking grad school get special privilege over all others, even by presumed liberal academics.
