Multi-Billionaire Oprah Whines About Sexism & Income Inequality At DNC

[Loren Pechtel]

Why would you so grossly mischaracterize their argument? Only one explanation makes sense: you are apparently falling prey to progressivism teaching its infectees to treat white and Asian people not as individuals, but as interchangeable parts, as mere representatives of their respective races. You are talking as though when a worker or student is denied an opportunity to prove himself worthy of high rank, he can't have been oppressed as long as some other worker or student of the same race will be there to represent him in the halls of high rank. Legislators, possibly. But CEOs, surgeons and physicians, not so much. Corner offices and operating theaters and doctors' offices are not a bloody legislature! No races can be over-represented or under-represented there, because nobody is represented there. It is not the job of CEOs or surgeons or physicians to represent anyone.

Exactly. Group averages mean nothing. What matters is how individuals are treated. Group averages are inherently incapable of either proving or disproving discrimination. It's a matter of faith that what's being modeled is a bell curve--but what we actually see is a double-humped curve. The people at the bottom are still at the bottom, those that were higher on the curve have been pushed to the right. Shoving them further right actually increases the disparity even though the "average" moves towards parity. And us white males have been watching our fellows tossed aside to make way for the group being unfairly elevated for at least 40 years. And there's no fairness being produced--the people at the bottom are still there, untouched.

I do not know how to fix the problem but our current approach is clearly counterproductive. We are doing evil in the name of doing good.

Which brings us back to your present post...

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

Your reading comprehension is not comprehending and your characterization of your opponents is ridiculous. The people who are poor and unfortunate because they were racially targeted are not the recipients of 90% of the spending. They are the recipients of 0% of the spending. The mere circumstance that the actual recipients of 90% of the spending are the same color as they are has no mystical power to make them the recipients of anything. You can only believe your ridiculous misrepresentation is truthful by buying into tribalism -- a tribalism that gets off on telling itself how "progressive" it is. It isn't. It's regressive. People are not interchangeable parts.

Which is the heart of the leftist fallacy--their faith says that people are interchangeable parts wholly shaped by the powers that be.

What absolute nonsense you write. Is your faith in your own beliefs so rigid that you cannot possibly conceive of the fact that other people have powers of observation, powers of reading, access to news and studies and data and reach different conclusions than yours?

Do you really believe that your conclusions are the only possible conclusions? Talk about relying on faith….

But you are presenting no evidence, just considering it self-evident.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Inferior students show up in large numbers?

Who would those be? The black ones?

No, you get white flight when BLACKS show up. And historically blacks are kept in shitty ghettoes with shitty schools, with the tax base mostly gone and jobs scarce. And then they are blamed for their own conditions, and to boot they are slurred as inferior.

It usually is, but not always. It doesn't matter why they are inferior, just that if you bring down the average ability in a classroom you harm those who are above the average.

This is why private schools can routinely outperform public ones--being selective about admissions. The average quality of the students makes a very big difference in performance. That's why we have elite colleges--it's not that they are somehow much better at teaching, it's that they select more teachable students. But we stick our heads in the sand in the lower grades and refuse to admit the same forces are at work.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They'll still be complaining about the "political correctness" of the Left when Trump's government is literally jailing all the "gender ideologists" as pedophiles.

Is this something Trump has scheduled within his first month of his speculative presidency? Is that supposed to happen before or after the blood sacrifice of all congresscritters, the burning of the constitution on the altar of the new empire, and the freshly erected gas chambers to cleanse the homeless and illegal immigrants? Also, I've lost the pamphlet - when do the public execution of registered democrats start?

Have you not looked at Project 2025??

Unfortunately I'm having a lot of trouble with my saved links so I'll have to go from memory:

Presenting as a gender that does not match your birth certificate is considered pornography.

And remember that exhibiting pornography to a minor gets you a trip to jail. Thus being trans around a minor gets you a trip to jail.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't believe Loren feels "entitled" in any way, rather he is happy to share equal consideration without regard for sex or race. But that is based on the assumption of it actually being equal consideration, rather than preferential consideration for one group.

It seems entirely appropriate to me to question whether or not preferential consideration is actually happening, or whether it is merely assumed. For that we would look at the actual policies and practices being employed. If you want to take that approach, I'm all for it.

But turning it into an ad hominem isn't an effective approach.

Exactly. I want equal consideration. And I do not accept disparate outcomes as proof of preferential treatment because it's never an apples to apples comparison. I also note that when you look for confounding factors that the disparities go way down.

I take the position that in general large organizations are going to present the best arguments they have for a position. Thus when they keep citing bad evidence I assume they have no good evidence. And that's what we see with both race and sex discrimination--the disparities go way down as you control for confounders. I see no arguments for why there's a residual core amongst all the false data, nor any willingness to address the fact that most of it is clearly neither race nor sex. You want me to believe, quit peddling obviously bad data.

 

[Toni]

Why would you so grossly mischaracterize their argument? Only one explanation makes sense: you are apparently falling prey to progressivism teaching its infectees to treat white and Asian people not as individuals, but as interchangeable parts, as mere representatives of their respective races. You are talking as though when a worker or student is denied an opportunity to prove himself worthy of high rank, he can't have been oppressed as long as some other worker or student of the same race will be there to represent him in the halls of high rank. Legislators, possibly. But CEOs, surgeons and physicians, not so much. Corner offices and operating theaters and doctors' offices are not a bloody legislature! No races can be over-represented or under-represented there, because nobody is represented there. It is not the job of CEOs or surgeons or physicians to represent anyone.

Exactly. Group averages mean nothing. What matters is how individuals are treated. Group averages are inherently incapable of either proving or disproving discrimination. It's a matter of faith that what's being modeled is a bell curve--but what we actually see is a double-humped curve. The people at the bottom are still at the bottom, those that were higher on the curve have been pushed to the right. Shoving them further right actually increases the disparity even though the "average" moves towards parity. And us white males have been watching our fellows tossed aside to make way for the group being unfairly elevated for at least 40 years. And there's no fairness being produced--the people at the bottom are still there, untouched.

I do not know how to fix the problem but our current approach is clearly counterproductive. We are doing evil in the name of doing good.

Which brings us back to your present post...

So, to sum up - a policy that directed 10% of spending to be spent on 11.5% of the population makes the other 88.5% of the population who is receiving 90% of the spending into “Approved Racial Discrimination Targets”

Your math is not mathing, and so your made up definition is ridiculous. Those poor, unfortunate, racially targeted recipients of 90% of the spending!!

Your reading comprehension is not comprehending and your characterization of your opponents is ridiculous. The people who are poor and unfortunate because they were racially targeted are not the recipients of 90% of the spending. They are the recipients of 0% of the spending. The mere circumstance that the actual recipients of 90% of the spending are the same color as they are has no mystical power to make them the recipients of anything. You can only believe your ridiculous misrepresentation is truthful by buying into tribalism -- a tribalism that gets off on telling itself how "progressive" it is. It isn't. It's regressive. People are not interchangeable parts.

Which is the heart of the leftist fallacy--their faith says that people are interchangeable parts wholly shaped by the powers that be.

What absolute nonsense you write. Is your faith in your own beliefs so rigid that you cannot possibly conceive of the fact that other people have powers of observation, powers of reading, access to news and studies and data and reach different conclusions than yours?

Do you really believe that your conclusions are the only possible conclusions? Talk about relying on faith….

But you are presenting no evidence, just considering it self-evident.

What evidence have you presented, other than your opinion?

Ever.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

About the above, there isn’t much to respond to, because it’s so silly. I’ll just say that anyone who thinks huge numbers of Trump supporters aren’t motivated by racism is living in an imaginary alternative reality.

I think the assumption of racism as the driving factor is errant... and mostly it shows an unwillingness to consider your political opponent as a fully realized human with complex views and competing values. It most demonstrates that you view "the other" as a one-dimensional caricature.

In short, it's the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

I disagree, because as I say, tons of white people SAY THIS — it is not an assumption, it is an observation. See, for example, here. You think this idiot is some kind of rare outlier? But we have tons of other examples, observations and evidence of racism, so no, I am not failing to consider my political opponents as “fully realized humans.” I am observing what they say and do, and drawing the appropriate conclusions.

The vast majority of Americans do not support that kind of thing. The MAGA core seems to have gotten in a war of who can be the most extreme but they are in their own echo chamber, that's not America. That's not even most of their cultists. Look at TSwizzle's posts--he sees it but dismisses it as not going to happen, not important. That's where I believe most of the Republicans are.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, schools aren't performing operations. But schools are, in some states and areas, complicit in supporting a child's opposite gender identity without informing the child's parents. This has included in a few cases providing children with chest binders, different clothing, make-up and similar external accountrements without their parent's knowledge or permission. Personally, I don't think that's something that should be within a school's scope to determine, despite how well-meaning it might seem.

Parents should not be absolute authorities over their kid's lives. The state has a duty to protect them from abuse--and I consider such actions to be protecting from abuse. Anyone old enough for a chest binder to be relevant is old enough to understand how they feel and old enough to understand how their parents are likely to react if told the truth. Stomping on the outward manifestation won't make it go away. And someone who has to resort to this sort of thing will likely face very real abuse if they told their parents. And society fails very badly at protecting teens from such abuse. Look at the whole troubled teen industry--there might be a good one somewhere in there but it's mostly outsourcing abuse.

But all of that is beside the point. The leap from opposing schools keeping secrets from parents with respect to their children's emotional and physical health to... jailing gender ideologists as pedophiles is a record-breaking distance. It's an absurdist exaggeration that serves no purpose other than to inflame emotions.

We aren't making a jump. We are looking at P2025 defining presenting as the "wrong" gender as pornography.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Anyway, that was not uncommon when I was a child in the 70s and 80s - but it was adults saying those things at the time. We who were children then didn't carry that forward. Most of my generation, as well as those that have come after me, pretty fully embraced racial equality and the ideals of MLK jr. Thus the bolded red bit in my post above

Exactly. I'm a bit older and saw the same thing. It was unquestionably about but something the stupid old fogeys did.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don’t know about where you live, but I witness scary political attack ads on a daily basis. Apparently, the market believes they work.

Quibble: The MAGA echo chamber believes it. I think they are becoming increasingly disconnected from reality, though.

The reality is that the MAGAs have nothing positive to offer and can only run on attacks. I have gotten some reasonable stuff from Democrats.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Man who has never been a parent claims that generational trauma has no impact on childrearing across generations. That the conditions you were raised in will never manifest in your parenting.

In other news, chimpanzee fails to learn the “right on red” rule.

Also, can you be done with the demeaning “faith not logic” slur? FFS, you know full well on an atheist board that people will take that a certain way, and you also know full well your use of it does nothing LOGICAL to refute their point. Every accusation is a confession, much?

No. I'm not saying there can't be generational trauma. Generational trauma is not discrimination and can't be fixed by anti-discrimination measures. Using anti-discrimination measures on generational trauma is painting over the rust.

And the term is correct. You are using a faith-based position. Faith does not imply a deity, it implies an implicit belief that something must be true with no regard for the evidence. Religion is merely the most common example.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

Race isn't relevant.

The fundamental problem is that teachers can't magically impart the same amount of knowledge to every student. Teach to the fast ones and the slow ones get left behind. Teach to the slow ones and the fast ones don't learn as much as they could. It's simply impossible to teach to all of them at the maximum rate they can learn. You minimize such loss by matching students as well as possible.

If teachers always taught to the material they are expected to teach inferior students wouldn't be a problem for the others--but such a teacher would leave them behind.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But you are presenting no evidence, just considering it self-evident.

What evidence have you presented, other than your opinion?

Ever.

The problem is you take evidence from the past and pretend it's relevant to the present.

We have discussed this many times, I'm not going to rehash old discussions in a thread where they are only tangentially relevant.

 

[Politesse]

I don’t know about where you live, but I witness scary political attack ads on a daily basis. Apparently, the market believes they work.

Quibble: The MAGA echo chamber believes it. I think they are becoming increasingly disconnected from reality, though.

The reality is that the MAGAs have nothing positive to offer and can only run on attacks. I have gotten some reasonable stuff from Democrats.

They have actual policy positions, they just can't state them plainly in public due to the historical unpopularity of the fascist platform.

 

[Politesse]

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

Race isn't relevant.

The fundamental problem is that teachers can't magically impart the same amount of knowledge to every student. Teach to the fast ones and the slow ones get left behind. Teach to the slow ones and the fast ones don't learn as much as they could. It's simply impossible to teach to all of them at the maximum rate they can learn. You minimize such loss by matching students as well as possible.

If teachers always taught to the material they are expected to teach inferior students wouldn't be a problem for the others--but such a teacher would leave them behind.

That is a fundamental misrepresentation of how primary school teaching works, holy shit.

 

[laughing dog]

But you are presenting no evidence, just considering it self-evident.

What evidence have you presented, other than your opinion?

Ever.

The problem is you take evidence from the past and pretend it's relevant to the present.

All evidence, by definition, is from the past, so I fail to get your point.

 

[Toni]

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

Race isn't relevant.

The fundamental problem is that teachers can't magically impart the same amount of knowledge to every student. Teach to the fast ones and the slow ones get left behind. Teach to the slow ones and the fast ones don't learn as much as they could. It's simply impossible to teach to all of them at the maximum rate they can learn. You minimize such loss by matching students as well as possible.

If teachers always taught to the material they are expected to teach inferior students wouldn't be a problem for the others--but such a teacher would leave them behind.

Race seems very much to be the issue for you. You cannot continue to use the term inferior without implying superior. You are now using immigrant students to take the place on the lower rung you normally reserve for ‘inferior inner city’ students. Either choose your words more carefully or acknowledge what you are basing your judgements on.

Students in every classroom in the US all come to school with their own strengths and weaknesses, talents, needs, and abilities. You assume that students from lower socioeconomic levels are both less prepared and less capable than students who come from homes where one or both parents are highly educated and upper middle class. It is a common assumption in classrooms everywhere with the added bonus that new students are assumed to be behind the class they are joining. Assumptions get turned into fact when students are seen through a very narrow lens. The fact is that there are students who are very academically gifted who come from very humble origins, from other countries or regions, for whom English is not their first language. Academic ability is not distributed along parental income lines. Students fortunate enough to be born into families who can afford the very best for their students on average tend to do better than students whose families struggle with food and housing insecurities. This is true. But so do students whose families are going through divorce, serious illness in the family, substance abuse in the family. But students who have such struggles in affluent homes typically have resources to help them. Students whose families struggle to provide basics often do not.

It is the job of the schools to provide the resources necessary to mall students to get the best possible education.

 

[Toni]

But you are presenting no evidence, just considering it self-evident.

What evidence have you presented, other than your opinion?

Ever.

The problem is you take evidence from the past and pretend it's relevant to the present.

We have discussed this many times, I'm not going to rehash old discussions in a thread where they are only tangentially relevant.

And as before, you will never provide any evidence.

 

[Toni]

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

Race isn't relevant.

The fundamental problem is that teachers can't magically impart the same amount of knowledge to every student. Teach to the fast ones and the slow ones get left behind. Teach to the slow ones and the fast ones don't learn as much as they could. It's simply impossible to teach to all of them at the maximum rate they can learn. You minimize such loss by matching students as well as possible.

If teachers always taught to the material they are expected to teach inferior students wouldn't be a problem for the others--but such a teacher would leave them behind.

That is a fundamental misrepresentation of how primary school teaching works, holy shit.

No joke.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Inferior = does not perform as well in school as the average for the school. This often means inner city kids but you observe the same thing with a flock of immigrants whose English is lacking. While it is strongly correlated with race it is not race.

To normal human beings, inferior is not the same thing as inferior. How is it that you think a student from an inner city, now attending a superior ( I’m just going with your logic here) suburban school, harm the education of all of those nice white superior students?

Do those immigrants dragging down nice white American students’ education include Asian students?

Race isn't relevant.

The fundamental problem is that teachers can't magically impart the same amount of knowledge to every student. Teach to the fast ones and the slow ones get left behind. Teach to the slow ones and the fast ones don't learn as much as they could. It's simply impossible to teach to all of them at the maximum rate they can learn. You minimize such loss by matching students as well as possible.

If teachers always taught to the material they are expected to teach inferior students wouldn't be a problem for the others--but such a teacher would leave them behind.

That is a fundamental misrepresentation of how primary school teaching works, holy shit.

Just because you don't like the reality doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What magic would you invoke to avoid this?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Race seems very much to be the issue for you. You cannot continue to use the term inferior without implying superior. You are now using immigrant students to take the place on the lower rung you normally reserve for ‘inferior inner city’ students. Either choose your words more carefully or acknowledge what you are basing your judgements on.

You're the one making everything about race.

Students in every classroom in the US all come to school with their own strengths and weaknesses, talents, needs, and abilities. You assume that students from lower socioeconomic levels are both less prepared and less capable than students who come from homes where one or both parents are highly educated and upper middle class. It is a common assumption in classrooms everywhere with the added bonus that new students are assumed to be behind the class they are joining. Assumptions get turned into fact when students are seen through a very narrow lens. The fact is that there are students who are very academically gifted who come from very humble origins, from other countries or regions, for whom English is not their first language. Academic ability is not distributed along parental income lines. Students fortunate enough to be born into families who can afford the very best for their students on average tend to do better than students whose families struggle with food and housing insecurities. This is true. But so do students whose families are going through divorce, serious illness in the family, substance abuse in the family. But students who have such struggles in affluent homes typically have resources to help them. Students whose families struggle to provide basics often do not.

And your faith shows again. Academic ability is correlated with parental income even when you strip away that income. It's not 100%, there are bright kids from poor families and there are stupid kids from rich families. And note that what you are describing is not discrimination, anyway.

It is the job of the schools to provide the resources necessary to mall students to get the best possible education.

In the real world they don't have infinite resources. And for any finite level of resources the pattern I described is inevitable.

If it doesn't matter why are there college admissions requirements in the first place??