Attention: "alt right" is no longer politically correct

[laughing dog]

When the discussion is about the treatment of a group Native American women and someone claims that "streetwalker" explains the outcomes, then that person is equating that group of Native American women with streetwalkers.

No. I am saying they are disproportionately streetwalkers, not that they all are. This is due to poverty, no reason to think racism.

I see. Assuming they are disproportionately streetwalkers is substantively different than assuming all of them are. Do you have any actual evidence to assume they are disportionately streetwalkers (or streetwalkers at all) or is this an example of you assuming facts not in evidence and then using correlation to prove causation?

 

[Arctish]

That hair is called "prejudice"

People should be treated for who they are, individuals with a unique and wide array of traits, and not as interchangeable representatives of groups defined by single traits.

I think I see the problem. Every time I say "group" you think I'm dehumanizing the people I'm talking about.

Would it help if I called them 'a collective' instead of 'a group', thereby unmistakably implying that I am referring to individuals who are being grouped together but not in a way that denies their individuality? I'm not likely to do that btw. I think it's ridiculous PC pedantry. But I might, just for you.

No. Under my method they would have done pretty much exactly what they did. Reporting on a trait in common between individuals and looking for other traits and combinations of traits to get to the core of the problem, which wasn't being gay.

Your method would have had a single doctor reporting a single case of pneumonia with no way to understand if his case was part of a pattern or discovering what factors are relevant, and no one else doing the analysis either, because that would mean talking about a patient like he was part of a group, or that his case was just like someone else's i.e. interchangeable in some not-insignificant way.

How in the heck is a doctor supposed to sort out the relevant factors if he spends all his time trying to avoid saying "this patient of mine is like that patient of yours."?

There was no epidemic striking the gay population.

Wrong.

There was an epidemic and it was hitting the gay population, hard! What caused it turned out to be something that could infect anyone, young or old, male or female, gay, straight, or whatever, and the epidemic soon spread beyond that particular demographic collective of individuals. But at the time it was first noticed it was highly correlated with gay men. Had researchers gotten lucky and discovered how it was being transmitted sooner, the epidemic might have been almost entirely confined to gay men with just a few hemophiliacs and people who got blood transfusions being infected as well, at least here in the US.

There was unsafe sex and the sharing of needles. That more gay men were affected than straight men was a correlation without causation. A chaste gay man was never at risk of getting AIDS. Irresponsible heterosexuals were. And the media treating gays as a group synonymous with AIDS only fed rightwingers in claiming that same sex affection means disease, and that gays, all gays, are degenerates.

You're talking about the victim blaming and the anti-gay bigotry the HIV/AIDS epidemic fueled. That's a separate issue. Identifying gay men as an epidemic's first victims does not mean blaming them for it.

You did something similar above when you took Loren's claim that streetwalking could be a explanatory trait for the murders you described to mean him saying first nations women are whores. He had to clarify that he did not say that all first nations women are whores. Pointing to the actual causes of AIDS, irresponsible unsafe sex and sharing of needles, isn't calling gays sexually irresponsible druggies either.

I called Loren on his jumping to the conclusion that 'streetwalking' explained thousands of murders and disappearances of Native women in Yukon and BC. He hasn't presented any evidence that 'streetwalking' was a factor. He just assumed it was the factor that explained everything.

It's quite possible that many of the missing and murdered were prostitutes. But you can't use the inherent dangers of prostitution as a blanket explanation for all of the murders and disappearances when you present no estimates of how many victims were actually prostitutes, or show the evidence used to produce your estimates. And it should never be used as a airy way to dismiss the death and disappearance of thousands of people.

Streetwalker Lives Matter.

Your suggestion on how to approach the issue of Native women in Yukon and BC being murdered or going missing at an extraordinarily high rate has the exact same problem. If you treat each report as a singular case of misfortune, you'll never see the big picture and you'll never learn how to reduce the risk to those still living and accounted for.

I haven't suggested treating them as single cases of misfortune. I have suggested treating them as individuals. Their traits in common can and should be studied, as traits in common between individuals. As I've said repeatedly what we should NOT do is treat them as interchangeable representatives of groups defined by one trait.

Yes, you've said it repeatedly. And I disagree. I believe we should use every tool at our disposal to increase fairness, social justice, and opportunity for success to all, not just some of them. If treating people as members of a group collective of individuals with shared traits helps advance the cause of fairness, justice, etc. then I say, do it!

***ETA: There's a really good movie called Hidden Figures about the black women who worked for NASA in the 1960s. In one scene, a woman is venting her frustration that she is doing the work of a Supervisor but not getting the pay or recognition while her two friends' careers are advancing. She stops herself and says "Now, don't get me wrong. Any upward movement is movement for us all, just isn't movement for me."

Do you think she's wrong to think of herself that way, as part of a group, and that advancement for any individual in the group is of benefit to all group members? Because I think she's right. I think her approach to advancing social justice is a perfectly valid one.

I asked if you disagreed, and to my surprise you said that you did, that sometimes we should treat them this way. I am still not certain you meant that even though you stated it clearly, because you seem to be indicating otherwise in other things you write.

Being native doesn't mean you are prey. Being black doesn't mean you are violent. Being a prostitute doesn't mean you are sex trafficked. Being Muslim doesn't mean you are a terrorist. Being Japanese doesn't mean you do martial arts. Treating people with traits in common as groups and then linking characteristics to those groups is how prejudice is formed. We need to instead see them for what they are, individuals, who have some traits in common.

No, your approach of confusing groups for individuals leads you to waste attention and resources on people who don't need it and to leave out people who do.

Can you give an example?

Driving While Black.

I don't understand.

Driving While Black is a phrase used to describe the effects of racial profiling, of black drivers being pulled over and harassed by the police far more often than whites in similar circumstances. It's been well documented.

Do you think the attention paid to the issue wastes attention and resources on people who don't need it and denies needed assistance to those who do? How so?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Since I wrote this I have tried think of any other time that conservatives do treat blacks as individuals rather than as a group. They don't treat them as individuals when when blacks are being disenfranchised by vote caging or voter id laws. They aren't treating them as individuals when painting them as criminal prone.

Exactly. And its a real problem isn't it? They observe that a higher percentage of black people are criminals, so they associate "criminal" with the black group and "Driving While Black" becomes a thing. Of course just because there is s stronger correlation between the black racial trait than other racial traits to the criminal trait doesn't mean that all or most or even many black people are criminals, or that being black in any way causes people to be criminals. But as Loren wrote above, people develop tunnel vision and bias solidifies more readily when we treat people as interchangeable representative members of groups instead of as individuals with a few traits in common.

I don't understand.

I can see that, but I don't know how to make it any clearer for you. If you did understand I suspect you may agree.

I don't have a great deal of respect for liberals. They have been unable for four decades to counter the conservatives' self-serving arguments as they try to give ever more of the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Arguments largely devoid of any consistency or grounding in reality. It is so bad now that liberals and conservatives can't even agree on which facts are real.

But I still don't understand what people mean by the term "regressive left." Is it just a play on the words "progressive" and "regressive" or do you have some real meaning behind it?

When I have spoken of the "regressive left" I do indeed in contrast to the "progressive left". The progressive left pushes for free speech and encourages people to question authorities, traditions, and even religions. The regressive left pushes for censorship and pushes their views in an authoritarian way, speaks of "cultural appropriation" instead of evolution, and supports blasphemy laws so long as they protect Islam. Regressives usually have their hearts in the right place, and a lot of compassion for minorities and women (as do progressives) but allow this to motivate them to act against what I would call basic liberal principles (free speech, anti-prejudice (including prejudice against white people) etc). Regressives will say things like "Black people can't be racist" or "White people are all racist" or that wrong think (as opposed to wrong action) should be punished. I like the word "regressive" because of its contrast with "progressive", but another word I have seen used for this part of the left is "illiberal left" and I think that also fits very well.

These highly selective universities reserve the right to make up their student bodies any way that they want for any reason that they want.

Including racism. I see a problem with that.

These research universities are charged with bettering society. They view their student body as an important part of this. If they only accept the students by the criteria that you feel is most important, the test scores, the incoming freshman class will be filled with socially repressed asian women and Jewish men and women of European decent, because they score higher on the college prep tests. I suppose by this criteria you view these universities as not only racist but also anti-semitic.

If they go out of their way to make it harder for Jewish people to get in, then yes, they are indeed. And if the argument is that black people, as a group, are otherwise treated unfairly because their scores are not reflective of their aptitude because they come from an impoverished environment etc, then that argument is making the category error I have been writing about in this thread. There are plenty of black people who come from very privileged homes, and plenty of non-black people who come from poverty. And if you believe the test is unfairly constructed, then make a better test, FOR INDIVIDUALS that better omits any influence from the race trait.

Careful that you don't realize that these universities also admit large numbers of otherwise under qualified freshman based on their legacy status, because their parents or other relative went to the school. They do this to reward loyal alumni, who provide most of their funding. I suppose that you consider this to be classistam, if that is a thing. They also admit a large number of low income students, whose parents can't afford the tuition, students who may not obtain the scores that the socially repressed asians do.

I do consider it unjust when rich people who don't qualify by merit are allowed to buy their way in. The only argument I have heard against that, and it has been made in this thread, is that the money they pay can fund spots for other students. That doesn't make this seem any more just to me though.

Yes, it is unreasonable. I don't care who from what ideology finds it reasonable. They are wrong and they are excusing racism.

and classism, anti-semitism, as we learned above.

Correct, if the above is true.

We have to add, nationalistic (these universities also limit the number of foreign students), provincial (these schools limit the number of students that they admit from the suburbs in favor of urban and rural students), sexist (males have a better chance of being accepted), and many more that I can't dredge from my memory now. You are really on to something here, I don't know if we have left anyone out. You are multiplying the horribly aggrieved by the minute. Could you possibly be realizing that you are wrong about this? That just maybe the universities themselves are better than you are picking admissions to their school

I don't pretend to be better at designing aptitude tests than universities. And I do recommend and urge universities to further develop entrance criteria and testing that better evaluates the aptitude of individuals.

But no, I am not wrong about this if the criteria is to let people in based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It is no less wrong to say to tell my Asian friends they have to score way higher to get in or that they can't apply because they are Asian as it is to say "no blacks".

If people are being hired in the public sector because they are black, then yes, that is racism. And it doesn't in any way undo the racism in the private sector. The answer to racism is to route it out and to create empathy between people of different races, not to create more racism elsewhere, such as in the private sector, or in minority owned shops.

If they can't work in the private sector because of racism there is a larger number of blacks available to work in the public sector. It is a natural result of the racism in the private sector.

Good point if so. But that isn't hiring them because they are black. That's just happening to have more qualified black candidates than candidates of other races. What would be racist would be making it harder for blacks than for other races to get in because they are "over represented" like we see schools doing to Asians.

You didn't respond to my complaint that the UBI is a subsidy for low wages. What the government subsidizes we get more of. No matter how much money you dispense in universal basic income, as long as employers have the upper hand in wage negotiations, which they have now and will continue to have as long as the government puts its weight on the side of the employers against the workers, then we will always have low wages.

When workers have UBI they don't NEED to work. Employers can no longer abusively suppress wages and exploit the need for food and shelter of desperate uneducated unskilled workers. They have to compete for them, or not hire them at all.

The load has to be put on the employers by taking away the current barriers to collective action by the workers.

Certainly. There should be no barrier to forming a union. But there should also be a limit to what Unions can do to individuals who want to work without them. In the USA unions don't have nearly enough support. In Ontario they have too much and become abusive towards members who are forced into them against their will. I see that routinely in my work.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No, your approach of confusing groups for individuals leads you to waste attention and resources on people who don't need it and to leave out people who do.

Can you give an example?

Driving While Black.

American black women, stress, miscarriages.

Is this a group thing or an individual thing... or evidence that there is a group effect?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Driving While Black.

American black women, stress, miscarriages.

Is this a group thing or an individual thing... or evidence that there is a group effect?

I have no problem seeing this as an individual thing.

The study found that more black individuals have pre-mature babies. Note how that isn't the same as saying that every black woman is more likely than every white woman to have a premature baby.

The study smartly isolated wealth and privilege from this and found that more black individual women who were privileged and wealthy had pre-mature babies than privileged white women. Note how it speaks in terms of combinations of traits and percentages of individuals rather than of groups with interchangeable representative members defined by the black and white racial traits.

The study then that found self perceived discrimination (it was done by survey) was highly correlated with giving birth to premature babies, and notes that stress in general is also so highly correlated. It theorizes that self perceived discrimination equates to stress, which seems reasonable in most if not all cases. I would theorize that is true regardless of the race of the person. It is also interesting to note that it is the self perception of as opposed to the actual discrimination against individuals. The latter of course contributes to the former, but it isn't a 1 to 1 thing. Some actual discrimination could be happening the individual is not aware of, so there is no self-perception of it (awareness of it) so it doesn't have this effect. And some self-perceived discrimination could be imagined.

It then points out the higher number of single mothers who have the black racial trait, which is another contributor to general stress, so another way to explain the pre-mature births. There are myriad of other traits that contribute to the general stress of individuals that are not mentioned. We can predict that further study will find them also linked to pre-mature birth. And we can predict that this is applicable regardless of the race trait.

The take away messages here are that stress appears to cause pre-mature birth, that self perceived discrimination (however created) appears to equate to stress, and that there are a lot of individuals who are black in the USA who self perceive a lot of discrimination against them. None of those messages are particularly controversial. And none of them require us to de-individualize anybody.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Driving While Black.

American black women, stress, miscarriages.

Is this a group thing or an individual thing... or evidence that there is a group effect?

I have no problem seeing this as an individual thing.

The study found that more black individuals have pre-mature babies. Note how that isn't the same as saying that every black woman is more likely than every white woman to have a premature baby.

The study smartly isolated wealth and privilege from this and found that more black individual women who were privileged and wealthy had pre-mature babies than privileged white women. Note how it speaks in terms of combinations of traits and percentages of individuals rather than of groups with interchangeable representative members defined by the black and white racial traits.

The study then that found self perceived discrimination (it was done by survey) was highly correlated with giving birth to premature babies, and notes that stress in general is also so highly correlated. It theorizes that self perceived discrimination equates to stress, which seems reasonable in most if not all cases. That would include both real and imagined discrimination, and I would theorize that is true regardless of the race of the person being or imagining that they are discriminated against.

Except this finding is among Black women, not minority women, but American black women.

It then points out the higher number of single mothers who have the black racial trait, which is another contributor to general stress, so another way to explain the pre-mature births. There are myriad of other traits that contribute to the general stress of individuals that are not mentioned. We can predict that further study will find them also linked to pre-mature birth. And we can predict that this is applicable regardless of the race trait.

You read the article, yet you seemed to have lost the point. It wasn't found among minority women. It wasn't found among African women. It was found among American Black women.

The take away messages here are that stress appears to cause pre-mature birth, and that self perceived discrimination (however created) appears to equate to stress, and that there are a lot of individuals who are black in the USA who self perceive a lot of discrimination against them. None of those messages are particularly controversial.

Only controversial thing there are your qualifiers in your statement.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Except this finding is among Black women, not minority women, but American black women.

Some of the findings mentioned are from a study where all the individuals are black. Some are not. Do you theorize that the former findings will be found exclusive to women who are black? Why would perceived discrimination not be likely to cause stress in individuals regardless of race? As I noted above, I theorize that it would, and this can be determined with further research. My further hypothesis, which can also be tested, would be that we will find little difference caused by race trait (genetics) in how likely stress is to cause pre-mature birth.

Only controversial thing there are your qualifiers in your statement.

It is controversial to be accurate?

But more to the point, what does this have to do with your question of whether it is a group or individual thing?

 

[ruby sparks]

Driving While Black.

American black women, stress, miscarriages.

Is this a group thing or an individual thing... or evidence that there is a group effect?

First and foremost, it is unclear.

 

[ruby sparks]

Guys, I think it's a no-brainer that there are both benefits and drawbacks from both grouping stuff and from individualising it.

If you want to make a case that less grouping is better than more grouping in a particular instance (I don't mean a particular topic, such as race, but a specific instance) then you'd have to make a case. There is no point saying 'grouping de-individualizes'. Yes, that is a risk, but please demonstrate the harm.

Personally, I doubt you'll be able to demonstrate that harm on anything more than an anecdotal basis very often. Grouping is natural and endemic. In statistics, it is an incredibly powerful tool. One golden rule of statistics is that when you group data, you lose detail, but that is really all you need to bear in mind. The benefits of grouping by and large outweigh the drawbacks. The detailed individual data is just too copious and unwieldy to extract useful information from that might be the basis for predictions which might be widely applicable, and it is widely applicable predictions (and thereby solutions) that we seek for issues such as the ones discussed here. As such, that is the 'general accuracy' we seek, and yes, it is mostly better than the accuracy that can be gained from not grouping.

It is much the same situation in almost every field of human endeavour. You won't predict the weather very well by analysing the behaviour of individual raindrops because there's not enough information to extract.

This is not to say that you can't go too far with grouping or that you don't have to be careful using it. If and when it can be demonstrated that grouping in any one instance is doing more harm than good, then fine. Think again. But take away grouping and you might as well go back to making up policies without much useful data, or based on personal opinion, sophistry or privilege.

 

[blastula]

Would it help if I called them 'a collective' instead of 'a group',

NOOOOOOOOOOO, DON'T DO THAT! To those in the classical liberal group, the 'collective' is the root of all evil and is the mortal enemy of the 'individual.' It's what makes the word "group" so scary that they have to deny groups even exist.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

GGrouping is natural and endemic. In statistics, it is an incredibly powerful tool.

Grouping data points is useful. Grouping people and treating them as interchangeable representatives of the groups you put them in due to a single trait such as race, gender, whatever, is prejudice. If you like prejudice and think it is useful, then I don't know what to say to you.

 

[ruby sparks]

Grouping data points is useful. Grouping people and treating them as interchangeable representatives of the groups you put them in due to a single trait such as race, gender, whatever, is prejudice.

I can only say that you are de facto and definitively wrong to say that prejudice is necessarily involved in grouping people under any group heading. It may be involved and it may not and we should be careful in case it does.

Hint: it's not a one or the other issue.

If you like prejudice and think it is useful, then I don't know what to say to you.

Oh I'm sure you can think of something to say on my behalf.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Treating people as groups as in "native women are victims", "black people are thugs", "white people are racist" is very clearly prejudice. Focusing exclusively on race status when investigating something is going to create false inclusion as well as exclusion. Just because a higher number of native women than other women are being murdered does not mean that all native women are at higher risk or even that race is why, just as not all gay men were at higher risk during the AIDS epidemic and AIDS wasn't caused by being gay. Treating people as interchangeable representatives of groups you identify them with is not only sloppy thinking. It is prejudice. And it creates tunnel vision. And it is a common practice that goes along with putting people in groups instead of talking about their traits in common.

 

[crispy]

identitarianism

Sounds like some kind of special diet, where you can only consume other people identities...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Treating people as groups as in "native women are victims", "black people are thugs", "white people are racist" is very clearly prejudice. Focusing exclusively on race status when investigating something is going to create false inclusion as well as exclusion. Just because a higher number of native women than other women are being murdered does not mean that all native women are at higher risk or even that race is why, just as not all gay men were at higher risk during the AIDS epidemic and AIDS wasn't caused by being gay. Treating people as interchangeable representatives of groups you identify them with is not only sloppy thinking. It is prejudice. And it creates tunnel vision. And it is a common practice that goes along with putting people in groups instead of talking about their traits in common.

You said it better than I can.

 

[ruby sparks]

Treating people as groups as in "native women are victims", "black people are thugs", "white people are racist" is very clearly prejudice. Focusing exclusively on race status when investigating something is going to create false inclusion as well as exclusion. Just because a higher number of native women than other women are being murdered does not mean that all native women are at higher risk or even that race is why, just as not all gay men were at higher risk during the AIDS epidemic and AIDS wasn't caused by being gay. Treating people as interchangeable representatives of groups you identify them with is not only sloppy thinking. It is prejudice. And it creates tunnel vision. And it is a common practice that goes along with putting people in groups instead of talking about their traits in common.

I think it's you who is saying that when we say 'native women are victims' (I'm not sure where you got the phrase) that it's all or only about them being native. It isn't. It's an apparently relevant factor among others. Generally, native women are more at risk, it would seem, that's all. I am fairly sure the investigations will not solely focus on race. The fact that some of them were (I believe) streetwalking prostitutes will surely feature also, because this probably increases risk. There will obviously be other circumstances individual to each case (some of them weren't streetwalking prostitutes, so that will be irrelevant).

Also, I'm not sure what 'traits in common' are, or why ethnicity or gender can't be considered as such or similar.

 

[laughing dog]

Treating people as interchangeable representatives of groups you identify them with is not only sloppy thinking.

Interestingly, that is exactly what your post does. As ruby sparks pointed out, no one is saying all native american women are victims.

It is prejudice. And it creates tunnel vision. And it is a common practice that goes along with putting people in groups instead of talking about their traits in common.

I know you miss the irony of that statement.