Affirmative Action (split from Are people already regretting their choice?)

[Loren Pechtel]

My ex-wife, however, had been pulled over 3 times by the time we had divorced. One of these times was for not signalling from a turn lane at an intersection, one of them was for speeding 4 miles over while driving on an otherwise empty road at 1:00 AM while being DD for ME (and the officer kept trying to question whether she was sober); I can't remember the third. Something about a tail light, maybe?

It was all so excessively stupid.

With the officer who pulled her over on an empty road at 1:00 AM, I could tell, even drunk, that the cop was acting differently than in my previous experience: aggressively not wanting to believe my ex. He only backed down from wanting to think my ex was drunk when they noticed I as the passenger, a "white person", told the officer what was going on.

1 am, they're hunting drunks. Of course they think drivers might be drunk, they're fishing for cause. I've been pulled over at one of those drunk checks, I could see the officer's face change when he spotted the luggage in the back seat, airline tag still attached. I clearly went from being "likely drunk" (I was coming from prime drinking territory) to "late arriving passenger" (the airport is farther down the same road) and got waved through.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What I want to know is how you're supposed to prove racism to a criminal standard unless someone messes up.

Racists see people as a group and not as individuals and they assign that group a lot of negative characteristics —or positive ones! and judge everyone in that group according to those characteristics that they, the racists, have assigned to them.

Which doesn't address my point one bit. How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Or shot dead through your own window because the cops came for a wellness check and were startled by you existing inside your own house. Or gunned down after answering the door with a legally owned firearm in your hand, because somehow, in America, being armed is a surprise. Or lying face down, handcuffed, and still shot because an officer ‘thought’ you were reaching. Or shot at while sitting hand cuffed in a police vehicle because an acorn fell from a tree.

Answering the door with a gun--bad, bad idea. If you think the situation outside the door warrants a gun don't open the door!

The acorn the officer was convicted.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We rarely cart around objects that will blend in with white hands.

It’s easier to spot a dark object in a white hand than in a dark hand, where it can be indistinguishable from the hand itself. You’d think this would mean white people should actually be more likely to be mistakenly shot for holding a dark object, since it stands out more. But the expectation that a Black person is more likely to be a threat overrides that visual logic. And the data proves it: in practice, the disparity runs the other way. Which tells us the real driver isn’t about what blends in with hands, it’s about bias in how people interpret what they’re seeing.

The issue isn't spotting, but identifying. The more contrast the easier it is to see the shape of the item.

 

[Toni]

You can keep on making as many excuses as you like—not being able to distinguish a cell phone from a hand gun of the hand holding it is black. I wish you were joking…

Some years back there was some research that showed more mistakes when shooting at black people. Someone grabbed all the imagery from the research and made up a website that confronted you with a shoot/don't-shoot with a time limit. It was extremely hard to distinguish whether the black hand was holding the black wallet or the black snub-nose. I e-mailed the guy who made the website about it--he had noticed the same problem but had used the images as presented in the study.

The lower information density of darker images has been a longstanding problem for computer vision--lots of things that worked on white people didn't work so well on black people. And human eyes have the same problem.

But it also begs the question: Is is more often assumed that something in a hand of a black person might be a weapon compared with something in the hand of a white person?

Since the researchers resorted to using bad images to "prove" their claim I doubt it's a real problem.

More than one innocent black person was shot to death by someone who answered t he door and was startled to see a black person standing there. As it happens, the person ringing the door bell was either at the wrong address or was looking for help because of a car break down. I don't read of white people being shot dead for ringing the door bell of the wrong house......

Yeah, a steady diet of Faux can make people paranoid like that. The bad times of old are coming back. I seem to recall a white delivery person being shot, though.

If it happens once: that even one person is shot by a police officer who mistook a cell phone or a paper lip or a pen or anything at all fir a gun, thst is too many times, no matter the complexion of any of the parties.

Police mistaking ( or ‘mistaking’ a cell phone in the hands of black individuals and killing unarmed persons is all too common and rarely, if ever, results in charges for the officer.

The Deadly Consequences of Carrying a Cell Phone While Black

The police officer who shot and killed 47-year-old Donnie Sanders won't be charged. Before him, there was Andre Hill, Stephon Clarke, and Flint Farmer.

www.vice.com

 

[Toni]

What I want to know is how you're supposed to prove racism to a criminal standard unless someone messes up.

Racists see people as a group and not as individuals and they assign that group a lot of negative characteristics —or positive ones! and judge everyone in that group according to those characteristics that they, the racists, have assigned to them.

Which doesn't address my point one bit. How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

For someone like you, there is no level of evidence that would constitute proof.

 

[Jarhyn]

What I want to know is how you're supposed to prove racism to a criminal standard unless someone messes up.

Racists see people as a group and not as individuals and they assign that group a lot of negative characteristics —or positive ones! and judge everyone in that group according to those characteristics that they, the racists, have assigned to them.

Which doesn't address my point one bit. How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

You don't but moreover you don't have to with AA.

It doesn't have to be overt or even conscious racism. It doesn't even have to be current racism for AA measures to work.

The reality here is that you, Loren, have been busy assuming some component other than the howls of racism and the echos of those howls through time has been behind the ongoing trend.

The situation at hand may not even be directly racist at all; some third party's old racism could be contributing to it, too: everything is cat piss and you can't even find the cat. Instead of bothering entirely with whose fault it is, it just works better to try and fix it after the fact best as we are able.

The only way that works in our current society where you need a job to get an education for your kids, and you need an education from your parents to get a job, the answer is to either educate the kid or give the parent a job and deal with the cost of whichever one you choose.

Because educational funds for kids are based on a community's parents' jobs (property taxes), that's not going to happen on the school side.

Of course it's not easy when you have a culture which largely organized to prevent any kind of breakout from happening there, with everything from opposing interracial marriages (if there ever was any sort of genetic component, intermarriage would allow that to dissipate), to opposing integration and inclusion into professional fields or prestigious universities, to bottling up poor people in specific districts and voucher programs to keep wealthy parents from having to contribute to the public schools, creating segregation even where outright segregation is illegal.

This all happened, and some of it continues to happen with the segregation of schools using the public/private divide.

All of that is because of racism and the awareness of why and how has faded for most to the point where people are doing racist things without any direct racist intention anymore, but it's still fucking racist.

It doesn't have to be explicit for it to be bad. There doesn't need to be an intention for people to be doing the wrong thing, nor for our need to stop them to be real.

To do that, we have to disrupt the cycle and yes, Loren, that feels disruptive. Because it's supposed to be.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What I want to know is how you're supposed to prove racism to a criminal standard unless someone messes up.

Racists see people as a group and not as individuals and they assign that group a lot of negative characteristics —or positive ones! and judge everyone in that group according to those characteristics that they, the racists, have assigned to them.

Which doesn't address my point one bit. How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

You don't but moreover you don't have to with AA.

It doesn't have to be overt or even conscious racism. It doesn't even have to be current racism for AA measures to work.

Except we are seeing the opposite. AA worked on the actual discrimination, it is failing badly to help those where the problem wasn't discrimination. The only way you can pretend AA is now working is mistake the yardstick (more blacks in school) with the goal (remove discrimination.)

The reality here is that you, Loren, have been busy assuming some component other than the howls of racism and the echos of those howls through time has been behind the ongoing trend.

The situation at hand may not even be directly racist at all; some third party's old racism could be contributing to it, too: everything is cat piss and you can't even find the cat. Instead of bothering entirely with whose fault it is, it just works better to try and fix it after the fact best as we are able.

This hypothetical past action keeps being blamed, but never actually shown.

And trying to fix it is exactly what I want. But that's not what's happening. AA is doing nothing for the poor.

The only way that works in our current society where you need a job to get an education for your kids, and you need an education from your parents to get a job, the answer is to either educate the kid or give the parent a job and deal with the cost of whichever one you choose.

Because educational funds for kids are based on a community's parents' jobs (property taxes), that's not going to happen on the school side.

Except a school isn't enough. Many places use statewide funding for schools, the inner city schools get as much or even more than the suburban ones. But without a home life that values education the school will accomplish little.

Of course it's not easy when you have a culture which largely organized to prevent any kind of breakout from happening there, with everything from opposing interracial marriages (if there ever was any sort of genetic component, intermarriage would allow that to dissipate), to opposing integration and inclusion into professional fields or prestigious universities, to bottling up poor people in specific districts and voucher programs to keep wealthy parents from having to contribute to the public schools, creating segregation even where outright segregation is illegal.

Intermarriage will do nothing about the genetic component because it's not a race-related matter in the first place. The reality is that we tend to marry people of similar intelligence, this will amplify the effects, not dissipate them.

Voucher programs are about religion. And even when it's not, vouchers do not mean wealthy parents don't contribute to the public schools, just that they receive the same benefit as everyone else.

Besides, understand why the private schools work better: admissions criteria. You perform at the school's level or you're out, which makes the students more uniform in ability and thus improves teacher effectiveness.

Actually, I would like to sort of flip the situation on it's head. A computer can do most of the teaching part, teachers should be using their time helping those with problems, not doing what a VCR could do. That would make high quality stuff available to anyone with a tablet.

This all happened, and some of it continues to happen with the segregation of schools using the public/private divide.

All of that is because of racism and the awareness of why and how has faded for most to the point where people are doing racist things without any direct racist intention anymore, but it's still fucking racist.

Racism inherently involves intent.

It doesn't have to be explicit for it to be bad. There doesn't need to be an intention for people to be doing the wrong thing, nor for our need to stop them to be real.

To do that, we have to disrupt the cycle and yes, Loren, that feels disruptive. Because it's supposed to be.

The problem is that you think it's a cycle that can be disrupted.

Poland after WWII. The educational system had been destroyed in the war, it had to be rebuilt from the ground up and the Russians did it in as fair a fashion as they could devise. Didn't make much difference, still a considerable correlation between parent's skill level and child's skill level.

 

[Gospel]

How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

You don’t need a racist to admit it for proof. Courts and studies use patterns, comparisons, and outcomes all the time, like identical resumes getting different responses, or whole groups consistently treated worse under the same rules. An admission is the rarest form of proof, not the only one. By your laughably transparent attempt at white nationalist denial, we may as well scrap all criminal convictions, since apparently the only valid proof of wrongdoing is a signed confession.

 

[Gospel]

We rarely cart around objects that will blend in with white hands.

It’s easier to spot a dark object in a white hand than in a dark hand, where it can be indistinguishable from the hand itself. You’d think this would mean white people should actually be more likely to be mistakenly shot for holding a dark object, since it stands out more. But the expectation that a Black person is more likely to be a threat overrides that visual logic. And the data proves it: in practice, the disparity runs the other way. Which tells us the real driver isn’t about what blends in with hands, it’s about bias in how people interpret what they’re seeing.

The issue isn't spotting, but identifying. The more contrast the easier it is to see the shape of the item.

You keep saying the issue is about identifying the object, but let’s look at what actually happens in split-second encounters. In those moments, officers aren’t calmly identifying anything, they’re reacting to the mere sight of an object. And here’s where your own ‘contrast’ point works against you: a dark object in a white hand creates more contrast, making it stand out faster than the same object in a Black hand. If the logic is that officers fire simply because they see something in someone’s hand, then white people should actually be on the receiving end of those split-second shootings more often, especially considering they make up the majority of the population. But the data shows the opposite, Black people are disproportionately shot. That’s why ‘contrast’ doesn’t hold up as the explanation, because if it did, the outcomes would look very different.

Look, I get that people point to crime stats as a reason for bias. But the data itself is poised by over-policing in Black neighborhoods, under-policing in white ones, and generations of poverty tied to racism. Without context, people slip into thinking the numbers prove something about race, when really they’re showing the impact of systemic inequality. Bias not only reinforces itself but it is bolstered by white supremacists and their bullshit arguments.

 

[Gospel]

Side note, I always find it strange when people use the line “I have Black friends” or “I have Black family members” as proof they can’t be racist. That doesn’t really work the way they think it does. Having Black people in your circle doesn’t automatically cancel out prejudice, because racism isn’t just about who you know, it’s about attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Even Black people can sometimes internalize anti-Black ideas and act in ways that are harmful to their own community. I've done it on multiple occasions and I'm black AF, so pointing to a friend or relative misses the point entirely.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

You don’t need a racist to admit it for proof. Courts and studies use patterns, comparisons, and outcomes all the time, like identical resumes getting different responses, or whole groups consistently treated worse under the same rules. An admission is the rarest form of proof, not the only one. By your laughably transparent attempt at white nationalist denial, we may as well scrap all criminal convictions, since apparently the only valid proof of wrongdoing is a signed confession.

Patterns are not enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in most cases.

As for the resumes:

1) Why are black hiring managers just as likely to "discriminate" against blacks as white ones are? That suggests something else might be going on...

2) There is a considerable pattern in educational attainment associated with names, this is apart from skin color. The name says something about how the parents were thinking. And that's the big difference in outcome--parents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We rarely cart around objects that will blend in with white hands.

It’s easier to spot a dark object in a white hand than in a dark hand, where it can be indistinguishable from the hand itself. You’d think this would mean white people should actually be more likely to be mistakenly shot for holding a dark object, since it stands out more. But the expectation that a Black person is more likely to be a threat overrides that visual logic. And the data proves it: in practice, the disparity runs the other way. Which tells us the real driver isn’t about what blends in with hands, it’s about bias in how people interpret what they’re seeing.

The issue isn't spotting, but identifying. The more contrast the easier it is to see the shape of the item.

You keep saying the issue is about identifying the object, but let’s look at what actually happens in split-second encounters. In those moments, officers aren’t calmly identifying anything, they’re reacting to the mere sight of an object. And here’s where your own ‘contrast’ point works against you: a dark object in a white hand creates more contrast, making it stand out faster than the same object in a Black hand. If the logic is that officers fire simply because they see something in someone’s hand, then white people should actually be on the receiving end of those split-second shootings more often, especially considering they make up the majority of the population. But the data shows the opposite, Black people are disproportionately shot. That’s why ‘contrast’ doesn’t hold up as the explanation, because if it did, the outcomes would look very different.

Look, I get that people point to crime stats as a reason for bias. But the data itself is poised by over-policing in Black neighborhoods, under-policing in white ones, and generations of poverty tied to racism. Without context, people slip into thinking the numbers prove something about race, when really they’re showing the impact of systemic inequality. Bias not only reinforces itself but it is bolstered by white supremacists and their bullshit arguments.

Saying it's not about identifying doesn't make it so. I found it very telling that the researchers used biased images to "prove" that people are more likely to mistakenly shoot blacks.

Besides, the whole thing is basically moot. Police aren't any more likely to shoot blacks than whites. Rather, police in cities with a higher percentage of blacks tend to be involved in more shootings. The question isn't why officers shoot blacks, it's why officers in black cities shoot more.

 

[Gospel]

The question isn't why officers shoot blacks, it's why officers in black cities shoot more.

More policing leads to more police shootings. Duh.

 

[Gospel]

How do you prove any given situation is racism short of an admission?

You don’t need a racist to admit it for proof. Courts and studies use patterns, comparisons, and outcomes all the time, like identical resumes getting different responses, or whole groups consistently treated worse under the same rules. An admission is the rarest form of proof, not the only one. By your laughably transparent attempt at white nationalist denial, we may as well scrap all criminal convictions, since apparently the only valid proof of wrongdoing is a signed confession.

Patterns are not enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in most cases.

As for the resumes:

1) Why are black hiring managers just as likely to "discriminate" against blacks as white ones are? That suggests something else might be going on...

2) There is a considerable pattern in educational attainment associated with names, this is apart from skin color. The name says something about how the parents were thinking. And that's the big difference in outcome--parents.

You’re trying to apply “beyond a reasonable doubt”, a criminal trial standard, to social science and employment law, where the threshold is patterns and probabilities. Resume studies already control for education and credentials; that’s the entire point of giving two identical resumes with only the name changed. And the fact that bias shows up across racial groups doesn’t disprove racism, it proves how pervasive and normalized those stereotypes are.

Mississippi Senator James Eastland (a Jim Crow Segregationists) in the 1950s frequently claimed civil rights advocates were wrong because Black people’s struggles were “cultural, not racial. Is this your argument? Because your statement "That suggests something else might be going on..." seems to allude to that being the case.

The “parents choosing the wrong names” argument isn’t new, it’s been recycled by white supremacists and segregationists for decades. During Jim Crow, segregationists claimed Black families gave their kids “unrefined” names and that’s why they didn’t succeed, not because of racism. In the 60s and 70s, White Citizens’ Councils mocked “ethnic” names from the Civil Rights era as proof of bad parenting instead of acknowledging discrimination. And when Bertrand & Mullainathan’s 2003 resume study showed identical resumes got fewer callbacks if the name was “Jamal” instead of “Greg,” the pushback from white nationalist outlets like American Renaissance was the exact same thing you just said: it’s not racism, it’s the parents’ fault for choosing that name.

Again, I have to wonder why IIDB.ORG allows someone who’s pushing white supremacist ideology dressed up as pseudoscience to be part of the moderation team. I'm beginning to wonder why I'm still here.

 

[Gospel]

The “parents choosing the wrong names” argument isn’t new, it’s been recycled by white supremacists and segregationists for decades. During Jim Crow, segregationists claimed Black families gave their kids “unrefined” names and that’s why they didn’t succeed, not because of racism. In the 60s and 70s, White Citizens’ Councils mocked “ethnic” names from the Civil Rights era as proof of bad parenting instead of acknowledging discrimination. And when Bertrand & Mullainathan’s 2003 resume study showed identical resumes got fewer callbacks if the name was “Jamal” instead of “Greg,” the pushback from white nationalist outlets like American Renaissance was the exact same thing you just said: it’s not racism, it’s the parents’ fault for choosing that name.

BTW in case no one noticed, claiming hiring disparities are ‘just name bias, not racism’ is a self-own. The ‘name bias’ is a mechanism of racism. Duh.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The question isn't why officers shoot blacks, it's why officers in black cities shoot more.

More policing leads to more police shootings. Duh.

I would think that increased police training and screening would decrease officer shootings.

 

[Gospel]

The question isn't why officers shoot blacks, it's why officers in black cities shoot more.

More policing leads to more police shootings. Duh.

I would think that increased police training and screening would decrease officer shootings.

Across the board, yes, and that would be a good thing. But it still doesn’t fix the problem of statistics built from over-policing (with bias) in certain communities, which then get recycled as justification to keep over-policing them. The real test would be policing everywhere with the same intensity. If we did, we might find that crime per capita isn’t all that different across ethnic groups, but we’ll never know until we actually try.

Meanwhile, rural and suburban white populations caught with fentanyl or opioids are often diverted to drug courts, rehab, and harm-reduction programs. But during the crack and powder cocaine era, Black neighborhoods were met with a “War on Drugs” that criminalized everybody.

 

[Gospel]

What’s wild is how fentanyl is already being framed as a criminal offense in Black and Latino neighborhoods. The pattern echoes the cocaine era: powder cocaine was first popular among wealthier, mostly white users, but when crack emerged as a cheaper form used heavily in Black communities, the hammer came down. Crack was criminalized to the extreme, while powder cocaine in white spaces carried far less stigma (aka racism).

Fast-forward to today: fentanyl overdoses began as a crisis mostly hitting white, rural, and suburban communities, but when it comes to arrests and convictions, Black and Latino people are disproportionately represented. The drug that devastates white America is treated as a public health issue, while the same drug in communities of color is treated as a crime problem. Strange, isn’t it? History repeats itself when the old ways refuse to die.