Anti-CRT Hysteria

[laughing dog]

t

Technically, LP is correct - disparate outcomes do not PROVE anything. Disparate outcomes provide evidence not proof.

Of course, disparate outcomes are used all the time as evidence to rebut any theory in any field. It is the basis for the scientific method: set up an experiment that controls for all possible influences but one and look for disparate outcomes. Taking LP's claim literally, he is denying the validity of the scientific method.

No. As you say, control for all possible influences. With discrimination "research" there's almost always no attempt to control at all. It's just documenting the difference and pretending that proves something.

In social science research, it is usually impossible to explicitly control for all possible influences even when conducting an experiment, let alone trying to tease out statistical significance from data collected in the past. Good research (which does exist) does acknowledge its shortcomings. While I am not expert or very familiar with discrimination research, your glib dismissal does not accurately portray it.

You are basically holding this type of research to an impossible standard in order to dismiss it results.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Can you point to specific systemic curricula you think are problematic? Certainly there have been individual instances ... Is there something specific that is being taught en masse that you can point us to?

... Why on earth should inappropriate activities have to be "systemic curricula" or "taught en masse" before the legislature takes action to prevent their recurrence? What's wrong with saying "Don't anybody do that again." after one person does what he ought not have done? ...

Can you point to specific systemic curricula you think are problematic?

Your Honor, the witness is unresponsive.

I agree. That’s why I asked the question again.

I asked you first.

If you object to witnesses being unresponsive, then (a) take it up with Oleg, and (b) respond to my question.

It has historically been true that when laws are made to solve a general “problem” that only applies to a very small number of instances that are typically handled through other means that those laws ten to be wielded in a broader sense to do more harm than good. This is actually why most conservatives and libertarians are against exactly these kinds of laws, at least when it is in their political interests to be so even if they are hypocritical otherwise.

So, I’m actually surprised when more conservative folks think the answer to a very small problem is a wide spread government response. That’s seem anathema to their viewpoints.

That’s why I asked if there is a systemic problem. Because in that case it may make more sense, and conservatives may agree, to address the problem at the governmental level, especially at a high level like the State.

Is that more responsive to your question?

Hey, now that I answered your question do you have any comment on it?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Once again, disparate outcome doesn't prove discrimination!

If measurable outcomes that vary considerably and predictibly in relation to racial identifiers are not a valid means of determing whether systemic discrimination is occurring, what is?

To put it another way, if there is no situation in which you would concede the point, why should anyone listen to you at all? You may be pretending to engage in analysis, but it's obvious you're just stamping your foot and asserting a political opinion, not making a valid point with a solid empirical basis. It means nothing to say, "there's not enough evidence that this is the case" if no amount of evidence would cause you to say anything else.

No. If you find a disparate outcome you look for why it happened. This is what the discrimination warriors virtually never do.

Take, for example, the inferior medical treatment blacks get in the hospital. Dig into it and it's purely a function of the hospital, not the patient. On average, hospitals with more black patients provide inferior treatment. Well, duh, overworked, underfunded hospitals (all too often they have patients they can't hope to collect from) provide inferior care!

Or the oft-claimed bit of police being more likely to shoot blacks. Nope, there are two problems here:

1) Once again, it's the environment. Control for the city and the pattern disappears. What it's actually seeing is that cops of any race are more likely to shoot in cities with more blacks.

2) And as usual it's compared to the wrong population. Most people do not have hostile encounters with the cops--and the shooting discrepancy goes away if you compare against arrests rather than population.

Again and again I see "research" showing "discrimination" that fails to consider obvious confounding factors--and when a good effort is made to control for them the supposed discrimination goes away or even reverses.

So your data shows that majority-Black neighborhoods in the United States are disproportionately poor, violent, hounded by the police, and medically underserved, while majority-White neighborhoods are relatively affluent, peaceful, and healthy?

I'm saying what I saw locally and since they were making an issue out of it I think they didn't have better data elsewhere.

There is a socioeconomic difference, sticking your head in the sand won't make it go away.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Your car has come to rest in the intersection. Your front bumper is in the front seat of the minivan. How did it get there?

That's not important. We need to focus our efforts on directing traffic around the wreck, not the fact that you ran the red light, were speeding, and driving under the influence!. That's all in the past!

At such a scene there will be two things going on:

There will be police focused on figuring out what happened. But there will also be police focused on getting traffic past the wreck and getting the wreck out of the road. Obsessing with what caused the wreck very well might end up with a secondary collision because someone didn't realize traffic wasn't moving right.

Six years ago I was in a 7 car accident that shut down a major freeway for 3 hours. Yes, the police were there directing traffic onto the nearest exits, onto the surface streets, and around the wreck. Yes there were also officers doing a very thorough investigation of what happened. Interviewing everyone (well, everyone not transported to a hospital) that was in the accident as well as multiple witnesses. Were they "obsessing" with what caused the wreck? Yes. In fact the police report (I got a copy) was 42 pages long, included statements from victims, witnesses, diagrams, and photos. They did a thorough investigation of the person who caused the wreck, the events leading up to it, and other factors which might be relevant in the criminal investigation which eventually led to 10 felony charges against the guy.

By your reasoning, all that should have been more or less ignored, because once the freeway traffic was moving again 3 hours later, the problem had been solved!

Is there a larger problem with impaired driving? No, says LP. That's in the past. Do we have a problem with excessive speed? That contributed, but "we just need to move on." The perpetrator's history of drunk driving, assault, and general shitfuckery? Irrelevant, because it's all in the past!

What you seem to be saying with regards to race, racism, race relations, etc. is "we don't need to look at what happened in the past that may have led to this. We just need to look at what's happening now. If what's happening now can be excused as the actions of individuals, then we simply do not have a systemic problem. Everything is fine. There's nothing to see here. Move along."

The point is that not all the effort is focused on figuring out the past. Some is directed at making things work now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

t

Technically, LP is correct - disparate outcomes do not PROVE anything. Disparate outcomes provide evidence not proof.

Of course, disparate outcomes are used all the time as evidence to rebut any theory in any field. It is the basis for the scientific method: set up an experiment that controls for all possible influences but one and look for disparate outcomes. Taking LP's claim literally, he is denying the validity of the scientific method.

No. As you say, control for all possible influences. With discrimination "research" there's almost always no attempt to control at all. It's just documenting the difference and pretending that proves something.

In social science research, it is usually impossible to explicitly control for all possible influences even when conducting an experiment, let alone trying to tease out statistical significance from data collected in the past. Good research (which does exist) does acknowledge its shortcomings. While I am not expert or very familiar with discrimination research, your glib dismissal does not accurately portray it.

You are basically holding this type of research to an impossible standard in order to dismiss it results.

No, I'm expecting them to do the best they reasonably can rather than play elephant in the room with possible socioeconomic effects.

 

[Ford]

Your car has come to rest in the intersection. Your front bumper is in the front seat of the minivan. How did it get there?

That's not important. We need to focus our efforts on directing traffic around the wreck, not the fact that you ran the red light, were speeding, and driving under the influence!. That's all in the past!

At such a scene there will be two things going on:

There will be police focused on figuring out what happened. But there will also be police focused on getting traffic past the wreck and getting the wreck out of the road. Obsessing with what caused the wreck very well might end up with a secondary collision because someone didn't realize traffic wasn't moving right.

Six years ago I was in a 7 car accident that shut down a major freeway for 3 hours. Yes, the police were there directing traffic onto the nearest exits, onto the surface streets, and around the wreck. Yes there were also officers doing a very thorough investigation of what happened. Interviewing everyone (well, everyone not transported to a hospital) that was in the accident as well as multiple witnesses. Were they "obsessing" with what caused the wreck? Yes. In fact the police report (I got a copy) was 42 pages long, included statements from victims, witnesses, diagrams, and photos. They did a thorough investigation of the person who caused the wreck, the events leading up to it, and other factors which might be relevant in the criminal investigation which eventually led to 10 felony charges against the guy.

By your reasoning, all that should have been more or less ignored, because once the freeway traffic was moving again 3 hours later, the problem had been solved!

Is there a larger problem with impaired driving? No, says LP. That's in the past. Do we have a problem with excessive speed? That contributed, but "we just need to move on." The perpetrator's history of drunk driving, assault, and general shitfuckery? Irrelevant, because it's all in the past!

What you seem to be saying with regards to race, racism, race relations, etc. is "we don't need to look at what happened in the past that may have led to this. We just need to look at what's happening now. If what's happening now can be excused as the actions of individuals, then we simply do not have a systemic problem. Everything is fine. There's nothing to see here. Move along."

The point is that not all the effort is focused on figuring out the past. Some is directed at making things work now.

The point is that you can't make "things work now" without figuring out the past.

We can't just point to the passage of the Civil Rights Act over 50 years ago or the election of Obama 14 years ago and say "this whole institutional racism problem is solved!!!"

The problem has not gone away.

Your position seems to be that if you are black (or Hispanic, or Asian, or Jewish, or any other racial or ethnic minority), there are no barriers to your success and no level of lingering institutional racism at work in your life. Bootstraps and what not. What's more, teaching the children of any of these groups that they were discriminated against in the past is wrong, and teaching the descendants of anyone who might have visited the discrimination upon them about the past is superdy duperty wrong because it might make them feel bad.

 

[Politesse]

I'm saying what I saw locally and since they were making an issue out of it I think they didn't have better data elsewhere.

There is a socioeconomic difference, sticking your head in the sand won't make it go away.

Yes, of course there is a socioeconomic difference between White and Black communities in the United States. Not only is that not a secret, it's exactly what "institutional racism" is meant to refer to.

 

[Bomb#20]

... Why on earth should inappropriate activities have to be "systemic curricula" or "taught en masse" before the legislature takes action to prevent their recurrence? What's wrong with saying "Don't anybody do that again." after one person does what he ought not have done? ...

There is no reason in particular. However, that would make the appropriate question "why are GOP candidates campaigning and railing about something happening everywhere when you are apparently saying it isn't remotely common at all?"

Where the heck am I supposed to have said it isn't remotely common at all? I haven't offered an opinion on its frequency; and I'm not sure why I should be required to have one in order to comment on whether high frequency is a legitimate requirement before action is taken. The demand to show high frequency appears to be rhetoric intended to transfer burden-of-proof; burden-of-proof is something that shouldn't be transferred without showing cause.

 

[laughing dog]

t

Technically, LP is correct - disparate outcomes do not PROVE anything. Disparate outcomes provide evidence not proof.

Of course, disparate outcomes are used all the time as evidence to rebut any theory in any field. It is the basis for the scientific method: set up an experiment that controls for all possible influences but one and look for disparate outcomes. Taking LP's claim literally, he is denying the validity of the scientific method.

No. As you say, control for all possible influences. With discrimination "research" there's almost always no attempt to control at all. It's just documenting the difference and pretending that proves something.

In social science research, it is usually impossible to explicitly control for all possible influences even when conducting an experiment, let alone trying to tease out statistical significance from data collected in the past. Good research (which does exist) does acknowledge its shortcomings. While I am not expert or very familiar with discrimination research, your glib dismissal does not accurately portray it.

You are basically holding this type of research to an impossible standard in order to dismiss it results.

No, I'm expecting them to do the best they reasonably can rather than play elephant in the room with possible socioeconomic effects.

Many studies do include socioeconomic effects but you still routinely dismiss any results as indicative of possible discrimination. I suspect what you demand as possible is impossible.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's called "systemic RACISM" in order to fudge the moral distinction between someone's having done something blameworthy and his not having done something blameworthy.

Which is a problem if that’s REALLY why the term is used. But I see no evidence that it is.
Would you be more comfortable with “systemic discrimination“, leaving the basis for said discrimination open to interpretation?
Perhaps you have a better term to describe discrimination based on race, and an explanation for why it’s better.

The purpose of fudging the word "racism" is to get marks to accept that phenomena the con artists disapprove of qualify as discrimination, and accept that these alleged discriminations are based on race, without having to go through the actual hard work of showing that whatever they're trying to induce emotional reactions against really are discrimination based on race. When you propose that what I'm objecting to is the use of the term "racism" to describe discrimination based on race, you are assuming your conclusion as a premise. You are taking for granted that "discrimination based on race" is an accurate description, even though that is precisely the point in dispute that the purveyors of the terminological fudge are trying to fudge their way around. Which is to say, you are the mark. You have fallen for the con.

For the love of god, last year one of the guys pushing CRT on IIDB actually offered as an example of systemic racism that his parents lent him money when he needed it. I can think of any number of better terms to describe that loan. None of them are better because "racism" is a bad term for discrimination based on race. All of them are better terms because his parents' choice to lend money to their own kid instead of lending it to somebody else's kid was not "based on race". This is not rocket science.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's called "systemic RACISM" in order to fudge the moral distinction between someone's having done something blameworthy and his not having done something blameworthy. The point is to settle the issue of whether people have an obligation to solve some particular problem not of their making at their own expense for the benefit of other people, not by moral argument but by equivocation fallacy. We as a society have figured out that discriminating against people because of ethnic hostility or hurtful stereotypes is immoral; some people figured out how to exploit that realization to win a rhetorical argument by recodifying "racism" to annex the range of cultural constructions they wish society believed immoral but that are not what "racism" means in common usage. It's trying to win an ethics debate by cheating.

Nice try, but that is not what systemic racism is.

Of course that's not what systemic racism is. Duh! The problem is, that's what the left-wing propagandists call "systemic racism". They call the fact that white people are on average richer than black people systemic racism even when it isn't ethnic hostility or a stereotype on the part of "the system" that is causing J. Random Blackguy to have less money than K. Random Whiteguy. Actual systemic racism is Jim Crow laws, sundown counties, areas where owners are kept from selling their homes to black buyers. Some of that garbage is still around, from the blatant discrimination of longer prison terms for crack than for powder cocaine, to subtler practices like cops generally being unwilling to testify against one another, and thereby de facto protecting racist cops. But the fact that some things really are systemic racism doesn't magically make every statistical difference between races systemic racism.

 

[Bomb#20]

If Affirmative Action isn’t systemic racism, then there is no such thing as systemic racism.

“If a Yugo isn’t a car, then there no such thing as a car.“

Idiocy.
I guess every time one of your ilk lynches a person of color, you’d like to call it “affirmative action“.

When has anyone of Oleg's ilk ever lynched a person, of color or noncolor?

 

[Bomb#20]

It's called "systemic RACISM" in order to fudge the moral distinction between someone's having done something blameworthy and his not having done something blameworthy. The point is to settle the issue of whether people have an obligation to solve some particular problem not of their making at their own expense for the benefit of other people, not by moral argument but by equivocation fallacy. We as a society have figured out that discriminating against people because of ethnic hostility or hurtful stereotypes is immoral; some people figured out how to exploit that realization to win a rhetorical argument by recodifying "racism" to annex the range of cultural constructions they wish society believed immoral but that are not what "racism" means in common usage. It's trying to win an ethics debate by cheating.

Yes. Exactly. Now go to OP #1 and read the Chrsitopher Rufo quote. This is exactly what anti-CRT is all about.

Where the devil do you think I got the phrasing from? Yes, this is exactly what anti-CRT is all about. This is also exactly what CRT itself is all about. The two are mirror images. Rufo is just paying his opponents back in like coin. The anti-anti-CRT-hysteria hysteria is the hysterical propagandists on the left whining pitiably about how unfair it is that the hysterical propagandists on the right are better propagandists than they are. Go talk to Loretta Swit about that.

 

[Bomb#20]

Ah, yes. Harvard admissions officers. Got it.

... On the harmfulness spectrum of all harmful outcomes from systemic racism, harm to white students by Ivy League admissions policies ranks right at the bottom. ...

Obviously. Ivy League schools don't racially discriminate against white students. They racially discriminate against Asian students.

 

[Metaphor]

They call the fact that white people are on average richer than black people systemic racism even when it isn't ethnic hostility or a stereotype on the part of "the system" that is causing J. Random Blackguy to have less money than K. Random Whiteguy.

I know those two. Pieces of work the pair of them!

 

[Bomb#20]

Stop being intentionally obtuse... what's that word - coy?
You know perfectly well that I was talking about the SPECTRUM of HARMS wrought by systemic racism, putting lynchings on one end and Harvard admissions on the other. The dates of most recent infraction are as irrelevant to the point as the price of cheese in macedonia.
There is good reason you didn't argue the point: you can't.

Savagery and brutality still occur. Joseph Byrd, a black man dragged to death behind a pickup.

You mean James Byrd. Joseph Byrd is still alive and still teaching at 84.

Trayvon Martin. A black jogger kill by three white racist. A policeman kneling on a man's neck for 9 minutes. And more.

Your examples are racism, not systemic racism. Two white men were executed for murdering Byrd; most* of the other killers received long prison sentences. What more than this could you expect a system to do about these killings in order not to be systemically racist?

(* Martin's killer was prosecuted but a jury bought his claim of self-defense and acquitted him. Were they right to? I don't know; neither do you.)

 

[Metaphor]

Stop being intentionally obtuse... what's that word - coy?
You know perfectly well that I was talking about the SPECTRUM of HARMS wrought by systemic racism, putting lynchings on one end and Harvard admissions on the other. The dates of most recent infraction are as irrelevant to the point as the price of cheese in macedonia.
There is good reason you didn't argue the point: you can't.

Savagery and brutality still occur. Joseph Byrd, a black man dragged to death behind a pickup.

You mean James Byrd. Joseph Byrd is still alive and still teaching at 84.

Trayvon Martin. A black jogger kill by three white racist. A policeman kneling on a man's neck for 9 minutes. And more.

Your examples are racism, not systemic racism. Two white men were executed for murdering Byrd; most* of the other killers received long prison sentences. What more than this could you expect a system to do about these killings in order not to be systemically racist?

(* Martin's killer was prosecuted but a jury bought his claim of self-defense and acquitted him. Were they right to? I don't know; neither do you.)

It seems to me that there's no evidence that George Floyd's murder was racist, let alone systemically so.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Stop being intentionally obtuse... what's that word - coy?
You know perfectly well that I was talking about the SPECTRUM of HARMS wrought by systemic racism, putting lynchings on one end and Harvard admissions on the other. The dates of most recent infraction are as irrelevant to the point as the price of cheese in macedonia.
There is good reason you didn't argue the point: you can't.

Savagery and brutality still occur. Joseph Byrd, a black man dragged to death behind a pickup.

You mean James Byrd. Joseph Byrd is still alive and still teaching at 84.

Trayvon Martin. A black jogger kill by three white racist. A policeman kneling on a man's neck for 9 minutes. And more.

Your examples are racism, not systemic racism. Two white men were executed for murdering Byrd; most* of the other killers received long prison sentences. What more than this could you expect a system to do about these killings in order not to be systemically racist?

(* Martin's killer was prosecuted but a jury bought his claim of self-defense and acquitted him. Were they right to? I don't know; neither do you.)

The subject was lynchings, extra-judicial murders. Not just systematic racism. Extra-judicial murders by racists are still happening.

 

[Gospel]

Stop being intentionally obtuse... what's that word - coy?
You know perfectly well that I was talking about the SPECTRUM of HARMS wrought by systemic racism, putting lynchings on one end and Harvard admissions on the other. The dates of most recent infraction are as irrelevant to the point as the price of cheese in macedonia.
There is good reason you didn't argue the point: you can't.

Savagery and brutality still occur. Joseph Byrd, a black man dragged to death behind a pickup.

You mean James Byrd. Joseph Byrd is still alive and still teaching at 84.

Trayvon Martin. A black jogger kill by three white racist. A policeman kneling on a man's neck for 9 minutes. And more.

Your examples are racism, not systemic racism. Two white men were executed for murdering Byrd; most* of the other killers received long prison sentences. What more than this could you expect a system to do about these killings in order not to be systemically racist?

(* Martin's killer was prosecuted but a jury bought his claim of self-defense and acquitted him. Were they right to? I don't know; neither do you.)

It seems to me that there's no evidence that George Floyd's murder was racist, let alone systemically so.

You've got that backwards. While I give you a temporary pass that the murder may not have been racially motivated, it was no doubt systematic considering that it is very difficult (thanks to police union arbitration) to throw out garbage like Chauvin.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

t

Technically, LP is correct - disparate outcomes do not PROVE anything. Disparate outcomes provide evidence not proof.

Of course, disparate outcomes are used all the time as evidence to rebut any theory in any field. It is the basis for the scientific method: set up an experiment that controls for all possible influences but one and look for disparate outcomes. Taking LP's claim literally, he is denying the validity of the scientific method.

No. As you say, control for all possible influences. With discrimination "research" there's almost always no attempt to control at all. It's just documenting the difference and pretending that proves something.

In social science research, it is usually impossible to explicitly control for all possible influences even when conducting an experiment, let alone trying to tease out statistical significance from data collected in the past. Good research (which does exist) does acknowledge its shortcomings. While I am not expert or very familiar with discrimination research, your glib dismissal does not accurately portray it.

You are basically holding this type of research to an impossible standard in order to dismiss it results.

No, I'm expecting them to do the best they reasonably can rather than play elephant in the room with possible socioeconomic effects.

Blacks were enslaved until 1865. Were screwed out of the benefits of the GI Bill in the 1950s. Were segregated in poor and under funded areas outside the white community until the 1960s. And white bigotry was embraced as a political tool up to the 2020s.

It is still happening today! Blacks couldn't drink the water in Flint, can't drink the water in Jackson. Inner cities were abandoned in a self-perpetuating cycle. Just how much intentional neglect do blacks need to suffer from before you say... oh... yeah... I guess there is that.