Mixed-race student brings lawsuit against charter school for mandatory CRT content.

[Jokodo]

You think you can numerically measure racial privilege? By all means, explain how you do that.

I don't - I'm a linguist, cognitive scientist, and programmer, not a sociologist. But obviously there are ways. For example, you can send out otherwise identical resumes with a stock photo of a black vs. white person to potential employees and record the rate of replies - a higher rate of replies shows a white person has an easier time finding a job, and better leverage negotiating conditions, and you can control for individual factors by having identical resumes and having the photos rated for attractiveness in a pre-test to avoid interference of that other type of privilege. You can look at the statistics of police searches. While the numbers of searches alone doesn't show white privilege, the percentage of successful searches by race does: A higher rate of finding drugs or a gun among those searched in one race suggests that people of that race have a better chance of carrying an illicit item without being caught, and thus the chance of avoiding a criminal record for the same illegal behaviours - in the same way a higher test positivity rate suggests more undetected cases in the case of disease monitoring. In NYC between 2014-2017 inclusive, for example, a weapon was found on 9% of the white suspects frisked but only on 6% of black and latino suspects frisked - see page 18 here.

Your lack of imagination doesn't show it can't be done, and believing so only shows your hubris.

It doesn't. Again, why would that be a requirement?

A requirement for what goal? It isn't a requirement if your goal is obfuscation. It is a requirement if your goal is to refute my charge against the previous poster and/or to justify your charge against me. The previous poster labeled your accident victim "their" victim; and you accused me of twisting his words.

What part of Politesse's post suggests to you that they were talking about the equivalent of other truck drivers?

If all your analogy does is present a case for "reducing the blind spots", then it's no doubt pertinent to whatever your social engineering plans are but it is not pertinent to the point in dispute between us. So when you said "It doesn't.", that was you conceding the argument. The previous poster was in the wrong and so are you.

So you claim based on a dubious interpretation of their words which you never bothered to justify.

Even the very same cargo truck driver who shoved the moped off the road may not be personally culpable in any meaningful sense - he may be if he was truly reckless and signalled the turn too late, or didn't look in the rear mirror properly, or we may want to blame the company for refusing to retrofit the truck with a blind spot monitor as they value a few hundred bucks more than a human life, or the legislator for not demanding such, or the moped rider for sneaking up to close, where he should have known he's in the truck's blind spot, or his instructor for not teaching him properly about trucks' blind spots. None of is the focus of the discussion - a solution oriented approach simply takes into account that the moped rider is now dead, and would likely be alive had the truck had a blind spot monitor installed.

That's nice, but if you you want to take that approach you have to be consistent about it. No fair making two different arguments, one of which is reasonable and the other of which is a trumped-up accusation, and then, when the accused reproaches you for the injustice, backing it up with further trumped-up insulting accusations, and then pretending you're the reasonable one on account of the reasonable argument you also made.

You call yourself a utilitarian, don't you? Well, time to live to live up to your words.

No, I don't. Where the heck did you get that from? I've criticized utilitarianism many times here.

OK, my bad.

Your objection is a bit like lamenting that we can't demand blind spot monitors because by doing so, we implicitly blame all accidents involving trucks on the truck drivers - and that unfairness is obviously a greater evil than dead moped riders, and therefore, the prudent thing to do about this problem is - nothing (or maybe, banning mopeds).

Dude. No, my objection is nothing whatsoever like that, and you don't have a reason to think it is. You're just playing lawyer and trying to put the accuser on trial for rhetorical purposes even though you have no case against me. "When the law is against you, pound on the facts. When the facts are against you, pound on the law. When the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table." You are pounding on the table. Stop doing that. Just stop. As you perfectly well know, my objection is not that demanding blind spot monitors implicitly blames drivers in general; my objection is to someone explicitly having blamed particular drivers who had been unjustly accused. So stop misrepresenting me. Stop trumping up new accusations to distract from the old ones.

Talking about trumped up accusations, as far as I can you never asked Politesse whether the "they" in their "their original victim refers to people who knowingly discriminate against minorities, to people who unwittingly acted in ways that put minorities at a disadvantage, to people who benefit from white privilege without any active role in creating it, or to random people who just happen to be white - yet you assumed it must be the latter and built your entire case of calling them a mean bully on that interpretation of yours. You should be ashamed of doing that.

In contrast, saying somebody is personally culpable is, in point of fact, accusing him of being personally culpable.

It is. However, noone has said that you or I are personally culpable, and your quote mine doesn't show otherwise.

Yeah, funny how that works. I didn't say you personally said the accused were personally culpable either, and yet here we are -- you chose to defend an accused person even though he wasn't you. That's what I did too. People come to the defense of strangers who've been attacked. Is that something you think we shouldn't do?

It should be obvious that "you and I" is a figure of speech and extends to other people you claim are unjustly accused. Do you have any reason to believe that the "they" in Politesse's "their original victim" is supposed to be a random person who just happens to be white, rather than a concrete individual who, unwittingly maybe and without evil intent, acted in a way that harmed a person of colour by virtue of both of them living in a racially stratified society? In other words, the equivalent to the truck driver who didn't see a moped in his blind spot. If you have any reason to believe that, you have yet to present it.

For the record, here's the complete sentence from which you pulled it. If you actually bother to read the whole sentence, you will find that...

Stop doing that. Stop making trumped-up accusations that you must on some level know are almost certainly false. Don't say things you should be ashamed of saying. Yes, I bothered to read the whole sentence. I do not believe for a second that you actually believe I didn't.

Assuming that you didn't read it is the most benevolent interpretation of your behaviour. The alternative is that you consciously decided to attach an arbitrary interpretation to it without as much as checking back with the author.

it talks about how the criticisms that attack CRT on the basis that it burdens innocent people with personal culpability are misguided precisely because it isn't about personal culpability in the first place. I know, it's a bit of an awkward run-on sentence, but if I, as a non-native speaker, can attribute a meaning to it, you too should be able to:

And yet it contains a throw-away line to the effect that the protesters really are personally culpable. It came off kind of like making a speech about how it's important that we should treat other people's religions with respect and the [anti-Muslim slur]s don't do that.

Accepting injury without protest is a completely inadequate way to challenge the common belief that such offenses are acceptable, earned, or "trivial". Again, this obsession with guilt and personal culpability is distracting from the actual problems, preventing true inequlaities from being addressed by derailing the conversation into a discussion about the aggrieved feelings of the accused, in which it is assumed but never stated that the feelings of the accused should be considered more important or more justified than those of their original victim. This was literally the central thesis of White Fragility, the book all the conservatives are so afraid of but haven't read.

Of course, if you prefer to ignore the context and work yourself up on a couple of decontextualized words instead, there's little I can do to stop you.

Decontextualized?!? I explicitly called out the contrast between the context and the inserted accusation.

In that case, I shall continue to call your behaviour disingenuous. Your choice, really.

I.e., you will continue to libel me. Stop it. It's unethical.

I suspect the underlying problem here may be that you and the previous poster don't actually understand why racism is wrong. Metaphor and I know why it's wrong; but the reason it's wrong does not appear to be the same reason you guys think it's wrong. But it's possible I've misjudged you. Feel free to explain why you object to racism.

You have no reason to believe that, since your entire case rests on an arbitrary interpretion of Politesse's word that not only competes with other possible interpretations, but is contradicted by things they said in the same sentence.

 

[repoman]

Old white people who are in the market for picking out their casket and funeral plot should not have a say for hamstringing their grandchildren who are getting into the job market because of their guilt for having white privilege 50 years ago. Not much active white privilege now. The sands are shifting quickly.

Old white liberals are disgusting.

 

[Politesse]

Whether biological races exist is irrelevant to the topic of the thread -- this is about public schools trying to teach children to divide themselves up racially into oppressed and oppressor categories. This is Political Discussions. If you guys want to argue about whether races are real, you should take it to Natural Science. It has standards of evidence.

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making. We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them. They won't make this claim directly (and will be offended at being called out on it) because they don't want to come all the way out of the closet, but that's why they are waffling on about basketball in a thread about secondary ed. The arguments for racist pseudoscience have changed very little since Josiah Nott, but they do try to cloak the basic argument in rhetoric and allusions.

You know scientists used to argue that runaway African slaves were suffering from mental illness, since no rational being would want to "escape" the situation most likely to "improve" their essential quality of life and character?

 

[Trausti]

..look nothing like supposed "race" groups, in fact, as your diagram correctly demonstrates. Your claim that "black" people consitute a single homogenous genetic population.

I don’t claimed that at all. Race is much more than skin color. East Africans are clearly distinct from West Africans...

Whether biological races exist is irrelevant to the topic of the thread -- this is about public schools trying to teach children to divide themselves up racially into oppressed and oppressor categories. This is Political Discussions. If you guys want to argue about whether races are real, you should take it to Natural Science. It has standards of evidence.

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making. We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them. They won't make this claim directly (and will be offended at being called out on it) because they don't want to come all the way out of the closet, but that's why they are waffling on about basketball in a thread about secondary ed. The arguments for racist pseudoscience have changed very little since Josiah Nott, but they do try to cloak the basic argument in rhetoric and allusions.

No, no, no. Simply acknowledging that humans are animals and their traits are subject to natural selection like all other life. Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

 

[Politesse]

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making. We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them. They won't make this claim directly (and will be offended at being called out on it) because they don't want to come all the way out of the closet, but that's why they are waffling on about basketball in a thread about secondary ed. The arguments for racist pseudoscience have changed very little since Josiah Nott, but they do try to cloak the basic argument in rhetoric and allusions.

No, no, no. Simply acknowledging that humans are animals and their traits are subject to natural selection like all other life.

So why is talking about this relevant to a discussion of Critical Race Theory?

Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

This is not what anyone claims. Natural organisms do not generally fall into "Races" any more than people do; that just isn't how genetic inheritance works. Variations cluster in individual populations, not broad continental swaths, and external coloration is never a good predictor of degree of phylogenetic relationship. Not in fruit flies, not in coelecanths, not in tree finches, not in capybaras, and not in humans. You're peddling pseudoscience, and worse, pseudoscience which is aimed at degredating your fellow-humans.

 

[Trausti]

Whether biological races exist is irrelevant to the topic of the thread -- this is about public schools trying to teach children to divide themselves up racially into oppressed and oppressor categories. This is Political Discussions. If you guys want to argue about whether races are real, you should take it to Natural Science. It has standards of evidence.

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making. We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them. They won't make this claim directly (and will be offended at being called out on it) because they don't want to come all the way out of the closet, but that's why they are waffling on about basketball in a thread about secondary ed. The arguments for racist pseudoscience have changed very little since Josiah Nott, but they do try to cloak the basic argument in rhetoric and allusions.

No, no, no. Simply acknowledging that humans are animals and their traits are subject to natural selection like all other life. Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

So why is talking about this relevant to a discussion of Critical Race Theory?

Well, Loren kinda started with the basketball comment. But it is relevant. CRT, to my understanding, excludes discussion of racial/ancestral/group population differences when looking at disparities among groups. Which is dishonest. Appreciating ancestral differences likely explains many of these group disparities without the need to invoke invisible forces. This is not to say that any person should be treated differently due to their ancestry. Though CRT certainly imposes disparate treatment based on supposed group membership.

 

[Trausti]

Lee Kuan Yew, who guided Singapore from the third world to first world economy in one generation, had to manage a multiracial country. If you search for his quotes on racial differences, it’s very not CRT. But the result speaks for itself.

 

[Politesse]

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making. We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them. They won't make this claim directly (and will be offended at being called out on it) because they don't want to come all the way out of the closet, but that's why they are waffling on about basketball in a thread about secondary ed. The arguments for racist pseudoscience have changed very little since Josiah Nott, but they do try to cloak the basic argument in rhetoric and allusions.

No, no, no. Simply acknowledging that humans are animals and their traits are subject to natural selection like all other life. Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

So why is talking about this relevant to a discussion of Critical Race Theory?

Well, Loren kinda started with the basketball comment. But it is relevant. CRT, to my understanding, excludes discussion of racial/ancestral/group population differences when looking at disparities among groups. Which is dishonest. Appreciating ancestral differences likely explains many of these group disparities without the need to invoke invisible forces. This is not to say that any person should be treated differently due to their ancestry. Though CRT certainly imposes disparate treatment based on supposed group membership.

But why would we base our sociopolitical analysis on long disproven racial pseudoscience?

Also, by citing Lee Kuan Yew as an unquestionable authority, are you saying that we should have a system of socialized, government run eugenics like the one he instituted in Singapore? For instance, paying out $3000 grants to white women with college degrees to procreate, and $30,000 grants to black or hispanic women to undergo voluntary sterilization as in that nation?

If not, perhaps you should clarify what you do or do not consider Minister Lee an authority/model for.

 

[Bomb#20]

You think you can numerically measure racial privilege? By all means, explain how you do that.

I don't - I'm a linguist, cognitive scientist, and programmer, not a sociologist. But obviously there are ways. For example, you can send out otherwise identical resumes with a stock photo of a black vs. white person to potential employees and record the rate of replies - a higher rate of replies shows a white person has an easier time finding a job...

That sounds like a numerical measurement of racism. Is "racial privilege" just a synonym for racism in your terminology?

In the U.S., getting your desirability for employment evaluated without regard to race, creed or color is a right. In your country is it a privilege?

In NYC between 2014-2017 inclusive, for example, a weapon was found on 9% of the white suspects frisked but only on 6% of black and latino suspects frisked - see page 18 here.

That's only a correlation study and it didn't even have a control group. And again, equal protection of the law is a right in this country, not a privilege.

Your lack of imagination doesn't show it can't be done, and believing so only shows your hubris.

My opinion that it can't be done derives not from hubris but from my general skepticism as to whether sociology qualifies as a science and from my particular skepticism as to whether the people who make such claims can even provide an objective, non-ideological definition of "racial privilege".

What part of Politesse's post suggests to you that they were talking about the equivalent of other truck drivers?

Loren wrote:

The problem is that it's all but impossible to fix background. Blaming racism provides an "easy" fix whose costs are supposedly borne only by the evildoers and thus don't matter. In the real world the costs are borne by everyone and the result is counterproductive anyway. There are some true racists and I have no problem with punishing them but disparate results is a hopelessly inadequate way to find them.​

Politesse replied to that passage thusly:

...this obsession with guilt and personal culpability is distracting from the actual problems, preventing true inequlaities from being addressed by derailing the conversation into a discussion about the aggrieved feelings of the accused, in which it is assumed but never stated that the feelings of the accused should be considered more important or more justified than those of their original victim.​

Loren pointed out the harm to "the equivalent of other truck drivers", and Politesse answered him by casually equating them to the the equivalent of people actually "harming and killing other traffic participants", by calling a victimized person "their" victim.

So you claim based on a dubious interpretation of their words which you never bothered to justify.

Why dubious? Do you have an alternate theory as to what the antecedent of "their" was?

Talking about trumped up accusations, as far as I can you never asked Politesse whether the "they" in their "their original victim refers to people who knowingly discriminate against minorities, to people who unwittingly acted in ways that put minorities at a disadvantage, to people who benefit from white privilege without any active role in creating it, or to random people who just happen to be white - yet you assumed it must be the latter and built your entire case of calling them a mean bully on that interpretation of yours.

Why would I ask Politesse? He wrote in plain English. The antecedent of "their" was transparently "the accused". If he wanted to claim it was something else, he could do that, and then we'd check if the evidence backs him up. If you want to claim it was something else, you could do that, and then we'd check if the evidence backs you up.

So who are "the accused"? Well, everybody you listed above is accused. To call the victim "their original victim" is to claim "the accused" are guilty. But saying "Fault is irrelevant" indicates one has no intention of supplying proof of guilt. And all of the accused are innocent until proven guilty.

You don't get to have it both ways. When you paint a person you're imposing costs on as actually guilty, you aren't entitled to the rhetorical advantage this gives you of appearing not to be doing an injustice to the innocent, unless you pay for that rhetorical advantage in the coin of evidence for his guilt.

For the record, here's the complete sentence from which you pulled it. If you actually bother to read the whole sentence, you will find that...

Stop doing that. Stop making trumped-up accusations that you must on some level know are almost certainly false. Don't say things you should be ashamed of saying. Yes, I bothered to read the whole sentence. I do not believe for a second that you actually believe I didn't.

Assuming that you didn't read it is the most benevolent interpretation of your behaviour.

You are evidently not a competent judge of benevolence. Don't trump up accusations and delude yourself that you're doing it for my benefit. You did it for the sake of rhetoric.

The alternative is that you consciously decided to attach an arbitrary interpretation to it without as much as checking back with the author.

False dilemma fallacy. He wrote in plain English and there was nothing arbitrary about my interpretation. Feel free to propose an alternative interpretation that isn't painfully strained.

...your entire case rests on an arbitrary interpretion of Politesse's word that not only competes with other possible interpretations, but is contradicted by things they said in the same sentence.

If we were to suppose he didn't mean "the accused" collectively, but was only talking about some guilty subset such as one you list above, then the entire response would make no sense as an answer to Loren's objection. It would simply have been play-acting at answering him. Loren, after all, was talking specifically about the harm and injustice to innocent people. But perhaps you would regard yourself artificially shoehorning consistency into Politesse's meaning, at the expense of the presumption that he was taking his discussion with Loren seriously and trying to give him a substantive answer, as benevolent.

 

[Bomb#20]

Whether biological races exist is irrelevant to the topic of the thread -- this is about public schools trying to teach children to divide themselves up racially into oppressed and oppressor categories. ...

But biological racism is essential to the argument that they are making.

Who are you referring to by "they"? Trausti? Can you point out where he argued for biological racism?

In any event, even if biological racism is relevant to the topic of the thread, whether biological races exist is irrelevant to biological racism. Oh for the love of god, do you seriously imagine that the theory that mental attributes vary with ethnicity and that this makes it okay to discriminate against people based on ethnicity depends on the variation pattern being tree-structured as opposed to geographically clinal?!?

You aren't claiming Taiwanese are on average biologically just as tall as Germans, are you? Well, if non-existence of biological races doesn't imply that Germans aren't biologically any taller than Taiwanese, why the devil would it imply that Taiwanese aren't on average biologically any smarter than Germans? And if some racist believes Taiwanese are smarter than Germans and believes this makes it okay to discriminate against Germans, how the devil do you figure the lack of a sharp line between Asians and Whites would prove him wrong?

We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them.

Did "they" imply genetics favors Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority? Or are you judging what we're "supposed to be inferring" based on ESP, or on what your own ideology tells you, or on "they" being heretics, or on "they" being outgroup, or what?

You know scientists used to argue that runaway African slaves were suffering from mental illness, since no rational being would want to "escape" the situation most likely to "improve" their essential quality of life and character?

No doubt some scientists did that. What are we supposed to be inferring from this?

Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

This is not what anyone claims. Natural organisms do not generally fall into "Races" any more than people do; that just isn't how genetic inheritance works.

So what is what anyone claims? Biological terminology is packed with infraspecific taxa. Does the way genetic inheritance works rule out subspecies and varieties as well, or just "Races"?

... and external coloration is never a good predictor of degree of phylogenetic relationship.

What's your point? There's a reason we banned discrimination on "race, creed or color".

You're peddling pseudoscience

Did Trausti peddle the claim that external coloration is a good predictor of degree of phylogenetic relationship?

 

[Politesse]

Who are you referring to by "they"? Trausti? Can you point out where he argued for biological racism?

In any event, even if biological racism is relevant to the topic of the thread, whether biological races exist is irrelevant to biological racism. Oh for the love of god, do you seriously imagine that the theory that mental attributes vary with ethnicity and that this makes it okay to discriminate against people based on ethnicity depends on the variation pattern being tree-structured as opposed to geographically clinal?!?

You aren't claiming Taiwanese are on average biologically just as tall as Germans, are you? Well, if non-existence of biological races doesn't imply that Germans aren't biologically any taller than Taiwanese, why the devil would it imply that Taiwanese aren't on average biologically any smarter than Germans? And if some racist believes Taiwanese are smarter than Germans and believes this makes it okay to discriminate against Germans, how the devil do you figure the lack of a sharp line between Asians and Whites would prove him wrong?

We're supposed to be inferring that, just as they claim genetics favor Blacks at sports and similar positions of manual labor, they favor Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority, making seeming structural inequalities actually just expressions of biology, and CRT irrelevant to analyzing them.

Did "they" imply genetics favors Whites and Asians for positions of wealth and authority? Or are you judging what we're "supposed to be inferring" based on ESP, or on what your own ideology tells you, or on "they" being heretics, or on "they" being outgroup, or what?

You know scientists used to argue that runaway African slaves were suffering from mental illness, since no rational being would want to "escape" the situation most likely to "improve" their essential quality of life and character?

No doubt some scientists did that. What are we supposed to be inferring from this?

Otherwise, you’d have to assume that evolution and natural selection inexplicably stop for humans 200k years ago. Which is nonsense.

This is not what anyone claims. Natural organisms do not generally fall into "Races" any more than people do; that just isn't how genetic inheritance works.

So what is what anyone claims? Biological terminology is packed with infraspecific taxa. Does the way genetic inheritance works rule out subspecies and varieties as well, or just "Races"?

... and external coloration is never a good predictor of degree of phylogenetic relationship.

What's your point? There's a reason we banned discrimination on "race, creed or color".

You're peddling pseudoscience

Did Trausti peddle the claim that external coloration is a good predictor of degree of phylogenetic relationship?

I can't save you from being purposefully obtuse. If I have mischaracterized Trausti's point, he's welcome to correct me himself.

There's no reason to bring up biology in this discussion at all, unless you believe it explains structural racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism, which is what Trusti was arguing against studying or acknowledging.

 

[Jokodo]

That sounds like a numerical measurement of racism. Is "racial privilege" just a synonym for racism in your terminology?

In the U.S., getting your desirability for employment evaluated without regard to race, creed or color is a right. In your country is it a privilege?

Some of the top definitions I find on the web for "privilege":

"1A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group."

"an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich"

It should be a right, but de facto, it is a right minorities are often denied. That makes it a privilege. No part of the word privilege, in any of the definitions I've seen, implies that you shouldn't have it, only that some have it and some don't.

In NYC between 2014-2017 inclusive, for example, a weapon was found on 9% of the white suspects frisked but only on 6% of black and latino suspects frisked - see page 18 here.

That's only a correlation study and it didn't even have a control group.

Of course it has a control group.

And again, equal protection of the law is a right in this country, not a privilege.

I didn't think evading harassment by law enforcement while engaging in illegal activities was a right...

 

[Bomb#20]

Who are you referring to by "they"? Trausti? Can you point out where he argued for biological racism?
...

I can't save you from being purposefully obtuse. If I have mischaracterized Trausti's point, he's welcome to correct me himself.

There's no reason to bring up biology in this discussion at all, unless you believe it explains structural racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism, which is what Trusti was arguing against studying or acknowledging.

But this isn't specifically about Trausti. It's about the ever-recurring practice of using ad hominems against skeptics as an excuse to reverse burden-of-proof. Believing biology might explain racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism is a perfectly sensible reason to bring up biology, when somebody is dismissing the possibility out of hand, without evidence, based on some sort of three-valued true/false/evil logic.

 

[Politesse]

Who are you referring to by "they"? Trausti? Can you point out where he argued for biological racism?
...

I can't save you from being purposefully obtuse. If I have mischaracterized Trausti's point, he's welcome to correct me himself.

There's no reason to bring up biology in this discussion at all, unless you believe it explains structural racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism, which is what Trusti was arguing against studying or acknowledging.

But this isn't specifically about Trausti. It's about the ever-recurring practice of using ad hominems against skeptics as an excuse to reverse burden-of-proof. Believing biology might explain racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism is a perfectly sensible reason to bring up biology, when somebody is dismissing the possibility out of hand, without evidence, based on some sort of three-valued true/false/evil logic.

Except that I did not make a moral argument against pseudoscience, and wouldn't. Pseudoscience can be immoral, but that is not the only problem with it.

Given that Trausti is the one making a concrete claim- "'Black people' are taller, and therefore better at Basketball" - I have no idea how "reversing the burden of proof" would be advantageous to me. He will have plenty of trouble establishing his own claim, and indeed already has. I note that he has been conspicously silent about the empirical data that was immediately brought into the thread to refute his claim.

 

[Bomb#20]

That sounds like a numerical measurement of racism. Is "racial privilege" just a synonym for racism in your terminology?

In the U.S., getting your desirability for employment evaluated without regard to race, creed or color is a right. In your country is it a privilege?

Some of the top definitions I find on the web for "privilege":

"1A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group."

"Privilege" was beaten to death back in the Are poor white people priviliged? thread, so I'll just repeat what I told the last person who quoted that definition at me:

I just googled "not a privilege" "a right". I got four million hits, the first page of which were:

Education is a Right, Not a Privilege | Global Partnership for Education

Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege - Senator Bernie Sanders

UNICEF on Twitter: "Water is a right, not a privilege. We're joining the ? for #EarthHour to show our commitment to build a sustainable future

Education: A right, not a privilege

Is healthcare a privilege and not a right? | Debate.org

Health Care is a Right, not a Privilege - The Duke Human Rights ...

'Speech is a right and not a privilege' - BBC News - BBC.com

Braden: Healthcare is a Right, Not a Privilege – Daily Utah Chronicle

Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege | HuffPost

Life Is A RIGHT...Not A Privilege! - Human Coalition

Life is a right, not a privilege - News - Precious Life

Healthcare access as a right, not a privilege: a construct of Western ...​

Feel free to tell Bernie and UNICEF and the rest of those activists that ... the dictionary says privileges are rights. Meaning is determined by use, not by dictionaries. Dictionary writers are supposed to know that and report their observations of common use rather than make up whatever definitions they please.

"an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich"

Being judged as an individual doesn't mean you get an advantage from people of some other race getting judged by their race; assuming they do is zero-sum-game thinking. Racial discrimination hurts everyone.

It should be a right, but de facto, it is a right minorities are often denied. That makes it a privilege.

Non sequitur. If that were a valid form of argument, it would imply that since some people have been murdered, that means the rest of us get to live as a matter of privilege rather than having a right to live.

No part of the word privilege, in any of the definitions I've seen, implies that you shouldn't have it, only that some have it and some don't.

I didn't say it implies that you shouldn't have it, but rather that you don't have a right to it and it could legitimately be taken away from you. Here's a typical example from official government usage:

https://www.dmv-written-test.com/question/driving-is-a-privilege-not-a-right_nXgVBWyp.html

You think the Department of Motor Vehicles was trying to convey only the fact that some people don't have drivers' licenses?

In NYC between 2014-2017 inclusive, for example, a weapon was found on 9% of the white suspects frisked but only on 6% of black and latino suspects frisked

That's only a correlation study and it didn't even have a control group.

Of course it has a control group.

No it didn't. A control group would be a group that's statistically the same as the studied group except for the variable they're examining. To have a control group you'd have to match the participants by behavior and location -- you'd have to recruit some white people to act suspiciously in the same ways and in the same precincts as the black and latino suspects, and recruit some black and latino people to act suspiciously in the same ways and in the same precincts as the white suspects. Due to cultural differences and local conditions, it's highly unlikely that the actual white suspects were acting suspiciously in the same ways that the actual black and latino suspects were acting suspiciously.

And again, equal protection of the law is a right in this country, not a privilege.

I didn't think evading harassment by law enforcement while engaging in illegal activities was a right...

But this isn't about people not getting frisked while engaging in illegal activities. It's about the 80-odd percent of the frisked people who weren't engaging in illegal activities. The police aren't supposed to use racial profiling.

 

[Jokodo]

"Privilege" was beaten to death back in the Are poor white people priviliged? thread, so I'll just repeat what I told the last person who quoted that definition at me:

I just googled "not a privilege" "a right". I got four million hits, the first page of which were:

Education is a Right, Not a Privilege | Global Partnership for Education

Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege - Senator Bernie Sanders

UNICEF on Twitter: "Water is a right, not a privilege. We're joining the ? for #EarthHour to show our commitment to build a sustainable future

Education: A right, not a privilege

Is healthcare a privilege and not a right? | Debate.org

Health Care is a Right, not a Privilege - The Duke Human Rights ...

'Speech is a right and not a privilege' - BBC News - BBC.com

Braden: Healthcare is a Right, Not a Privilege – Daily Utah Chronicle

Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege | HuffPost

Life Is A RIGHT...Not A Privilege! - Human Coalition

Life is a right, not a privilege - News - Precious Life

Healthcare access as a right, not a privilege: a construct of Western ...​

Feel free to tell Bernie and UNICEF and the rest of those activists that ... the dictionary says privileges are rights. Meaning is determined by use, not by dictionaries. Dictionary writers are supposed to know that and report their observations of common use rather than make up whatever definitions they please.

"an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich"

Being judged as an individual doesn't mean you get an advantage from people of some other race getting judged by their race; assuming they do is zero-sum-game thinking.

Can you point to where I'm assuming such? Being judged as an individual gives you a relative advantage vis-a-vis not being judged as an individual - an advantage as a matter of fact not everyone enjoys to the same degree. This doesn't imply you directly benefit from another person not being judged as an individual.

But this isn't about people not getting frisked while engaging in illegal activities. It's about the 80-odd percent of the frisked people who weren't engaging in illegal activities. The police aren't supposed to use racial profiling.

The mere fact that, when frisked, white people are found to have engaged in illegal activities at higher rate than black people strongly indicates that police are, on average, using a lower threshold for when to treat a black individual as suspect. This again strongly suggests that a white person who is in fact engaging in illegal activity has a better chance of going undetected.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The mere fact that, when frisked, white people are found to have engaged in illegal activities at higher rate than black people strongly indicates that police are, on average, using a lower threshold for when to treat a black individual as suspect. This again strongly suggests that a white person who is in fact engaging in illegal activity has a better chance of going undetected.

Bad data--more of those white frisks are subsequent to arrest.

 

[Bomb#20]

But this isn't specifically about Trausti. It's about the ever-recurring practice of using ad hominems against skeptics as an excuse to reverse burden-of-proof. Believing biology might explain racial disparities absent the existence of structural racism is a perfectly sensible reason to bring up biology, when somebody is dismissing the possibility out of hand, without evidence, based on some sort of three-valued true/false/evil logic.

Except that I did not make a moral argument against pseudoscience, and wouldn't. Pseudoscience can be immoral, but that is not the only problem with it.

But this isn't specifically about you either. It's CRT that's on trial here, not you.

Given that Trausti is the one making a concrete claim- "'Black people' are taller, and therefore better at Basketball"

You know, it's really not a good idea to take your own attempted paraphrase of somebody else's position, and impute it to him, in quotation marks.

- I have no idea how "reversing the burden of proof" would be advantageous to me.

You don't? Then I'll explain. What you appear to have mangled into your above misquotation is post #122. Trausti wrote it to support Loren's posts, which were in response to your statement in post #89:

"Racism and racial inequality are essentially synonyms from a CRT perspective (or perhaps, one is the primary symptom and measure of the other)"​

That racism and racial inequality are essentially synonyms is a concrete claim: it amounts to claiming that apart from racism, none of the other differences that correlate with race -- culture, biology, geography and so forth -- contribute to racial inequality. And you called CRT "science". So no, it's not given that "Trausti is the one making a concrete claim". You and he both made concrete claims, and you went first. If you want CRT's claim to be accepted, but you don't have proof of it, then of course reversing the burden of proof would be advantageous to you.

So, can you produce any positive evidence that racism and racial inequality are essentially synonyms, or that one is the primary measure of the other?

 

[Bomb#20]

"an advantage that only one person or group of people has, usually because of their position or because they are rich"

Being judged as an individual doesn't mean you get an advantage from people of some other race getting judged by their race; assuming they do is zero-sum-game thinking. Racial discrimination hurts everyone.

Can you point to where I'm assuming such?

That depends. When you asserted that "racial privilege" can be measured, was that the definition you were using? If you were, that's where you were assuming such. If you posted that definition not because you were using it but just to dispute my understanding of the term, then no. But I didn't say you were assuming such; I said claiming racism gives racial privilege to one race, going by that definition of "privilege", assumes such.

Being judged as an individual gives you a relative advantage vis-a-vis not being judged as an individual - an advantage as a matter of fact not everyone enjoys to the same degree. This doesn't imply you directly benefit from another person not being judged as an individual.

But the definition doesn't say "relative advantage"; it just says "advantage". Calling a mere relative advantage a "privilege" is simply wrong. Again, when people are being murdered, not being murdered is a relative advantage; but it's still a right, not a privilege.

But this isn't about people not getting frisked while engaging in illegal activities. It's about the 80-odd percent of the frisked people who weren't engaging in illegal activities. The police aren't supposed to use racial profiling.

The mere fact that, when frisked, white people are found to have engaged in illegal activities at higher rate than black people strongly indicates that police are, on average, using a lower threshold for when to treat a black individual as suspect. This again strongly suggests that a white person who is in fact engaging in illegal activity has a better chance of going undetected.

I don't see how you're getting that when they haven't controlled for other factors. For example, geography. Those 6% and 9% figures are averages over all of New York; but New York is a diverse place with lots of different police precincts. So it would be perfectly possible for there to be some precincts where 5% of the black and 5% of the white frisked suspects are carrying guns, and other precincts where 10% of the black and 10% of the white frisked suspects are carrying guns, and when you average that over all the frisks over all the precincts, it comes to 6% of the black suspects and 9% of the white suspects carrying guns. That could happen if there's a higher proportion of white suspects in the 10% precincts and a higher proportion of black suspects in the 5% precincts. In this scenario, the police in each precinct are using the same threshold regardless of color; the difference in overall statistics happens because suspect color correlates with geography.