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

[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.

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?

How on earth do you know a damn thing about teaching???

 

[Politesse]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

 

[Toni]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

I agree that this should be the case but are there actually any such societies?

 

[Politesse]

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

A lesson plan, an assessment rubric, thirty kids and an instructor.

 

[Politesse]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

I agree that this should be the case but are there actually any such societies?

The community college system for which I work, of course.

 

[ZiprHead]

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?

You know we have actual teachers here, right?

 

[Toni]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

I agree that this should be the case but are there actually any such societies?

The community college system for which I work, of course.

Ah. My biases are showing. I usually think of college as a 4 year university.

 

[Politesse]

The community college system for which I work, of course.

Ah. My biases are showing. I usually think of college as a 4 year university.

You're not alone, and my tongue is a bit in cheek. Our principal economic value is as a way to cheat one's way into a four year by duplicitously allowing the poor opportunities to compete on merit, not the reputation of any degree we can award. But I do see our admissions policy as a feature not a bug.

 

[Toni]

The community college system for which I work, of course.

Ah. My biases are showing. I usually think of college as a 4 year university.

You're not alone, and my tongue is a bit in cheek. Our principal economic value is as a way to cheat one's way into a four year by duplicitously allowing the poor opportunities to compete on merit, not the reputation of any degree we can award. But I do see our admissions policy as a feature not a bug.

Me, too!

 

[Derec]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

Which "civilized" countries do you have in mind where there are no admissions requirements for university education?

 

[Emily Lake]

Sorry, I’m just an American grammar Nazi because of the profession I was in.

Okay... professional (off topic) perspective please: When should I use "lighted" instead of "lit"? And is it a "damper" or a "dampener"?

 

[Emily Lake]

Lots going on so I wasn’t clear: it was a reference to advice given married ladies with reference to their husbands’ sexual attentions. They were not expected to enjoy sex but to tolerate it without complaint. Thinking of England, I suppose was intended as a more noble direction to turn their minds. After all, England needed healthy babies.

I added it to my profile as something I was not willing to do: lay back and take it without complaint or fighting back. If I remember, during my very sleep deprived days when I averaged something like 5 hours of sleep a night.

But surely discussing any aspect of my profile or my posting style is quite boring? I think so anyway. Pretty certain we all agree that we are all a collection of pretty flawed people.

TBF, up until this discussion I had no idea your profile location had any hint at sex at all. I always read it as being a bit sarcastic, more or less saying "I'm lounging around daydreaming about a place I'd like to be"

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Yes, I think that idiot is a rare outlier.

I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist. My dad is black, I grew up in a mixed household, with a mixed sister. The black side of my family outnumbers the white side my orders of magnitude. I grew up as a military brat, surrounded by immense diversity. I attended schools where I, as the melanin deficient child, was the minority. Racism certainly does exist. But the vast majority of humans under about the age of 70 do not hold blatantly racist views. Furthermore, to assign racism as the single driving motivation for half the voting public is poor logic.

As I said, it demonstrates a lack of consideration of "the other" as being fully human. You view "them" as being single-dimensional caricatures whose only motivation is malice that you have imagined onto them. At the very most gracious interpretation, you fail to understand your opponent.

Get thee hence to some Sun Tzu: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

I have never attributed racism as the sole motivating factor for those who vote for Trump or people like the idiot cited above. And no, I see plenty of evidence that this guy is NOT a rare outlier. When I grew up in white suburban Detroit I was saturated with racism against blacks, including in most of my own family, and it was exactly of a piece with how the guy cited above talks. Blacks were routinely characterized not just as the N-word, but with all sorts of Trump-style appellations such as “liver lips” and “jungle bunnies.” It was all over the place. This is reality, then and now. At least one of Trump’s own relatives has said he routinely uses the N-word in private and I’ve no doubt, none, that millions of his supporters do as well.

You know that things have changed since the 80s, right?

I think you and I are of similar age, I'm now 50, and IIRC you might be a wee bit older? I'm not sure, I suck at keeping track of random bits of intel about people whose faces I've never seen. Actually, I kind of suck at keeping track of things like that about people I routinely interact with IRL too, so it's clearly a me problem.

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

There's a demographic shift happening right now that a whole, whole, whole lot of people are not taking into consideration: The largest voting block for this election is NOT baby boomers, it's gen x. And Gen X has extremely different motivations, mindsets, and views than Boomers. I keep seeing rhetoric from politicians and media, as well as assumptions from pollsters, that all assume that what has been true in the past about how different blocks vote will continue to be true in the future. I think that's a horrible assumption. The blather that Trump is spewing is the kind of talking points that resonated with conservative boomers. The stuff that Harris mouths are the things that resonated with liberal boomers. Neither of them have much of a fucking clue what's important to Gen X, and both of them are failing to adapt. This is further confounded by the fact that gen x is absolutely the least likely to engage in political polls. Right now, in my opinion, nobody has a clue what the fuck is going to happen in November, and any assumptions anyone makes about why anybody might vote for one part or the other is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong, because those assumptions are based on boomer behavior.

It's a shitshow now, it will continue to be a shitshow through November, it's going to be a bigger shitshow between November and January, and nobody's prognostications hold any water. If anyone manages to be within spitting distance of right, it will be through sheer luck.

All very interesting, but the reality is that Gen X doesn't seem to go to the polls in sufficiently large numbers to make a difference. Whether you realize it or not, real societal change either takes a revolution or a long time. In either case, right now, we are stuck in between those two situations. I agree that Trump and his MAGAtards are pretty close to the last gasp of the "I;m white , I'm scared but I'm right" vote. Jan. 6 was not some random event.

I strongly suspect that assumption is in the midst of change.

Generally speaking, it's been true that older people are more politically engaged and more likely to vote. And even though Gen X hasn't exactly been "young" these past couple of decades, we're also edging up toward retirement now. We're well established in our careers, our homes, our families. And more importantly... politics are affecting us. We've always been sleeping bears, and I think we've largely begun to wake up.

This is happening in concert with boomers dying off. The voting aged population is now about evenly split between Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials. The big question to me is... Who is going to show up to vote?

What I do feel pretty comfortable saying is that any polling being done right now is almost guaranteed to be missing the Gen X view. Boomers have historically been willing to do phone-based polling, and I don't expect that to have changed. Millennials are digitally engaged and probably do online polling - especially as they're very vocal about their political opinions. But we saw this with Sanders - a very vocal collection of Millennials who strongly supported him, but didn't actually show up at the booth.

Regardless of the outcome, I'm really looking forward to the data that will come out of this election. I think it's going to be really interesting.

 

[Emily Lake]

1. I'll coin a new term. For decades white people have been Approved Racial Discrimination Targets Of Government. (See, for example, Fullilove v. Klutznick

... 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, ...

Let's math accurately. ...

For funsies, let's flip this around, and see how it sits with you guys.

Let's say that group A comprises 90% of the population. Let's assume then that the government earmarks 90% of the funds to go exclusively to members of group A. The remaining 10% is available to everyone, irrespective of their group affiliation. That would mean that A has access to 90% of the funds exclusively, and also has equal access to the remaining 10% of funds. That would give group A access to 99% of the funds, leaving only 1% for the remaining 10% of the population.

I'm not a fan of exclusive funding without EXTREMELY good justification, and even then I want clear boundaries, and defined expiration criteria for those exclusive arrangements. That said, it would be far more reasonable to earmark that each group gets a proportional amount of funding than to specify a subset as exclusively available while also allowing the remainder to be accessible as well.

As much I find the entire approach unpalatable, I'd be more open to saying minorities comprise 11.5% of the population, and so they get exclusive access to 11.5% of the funding. The remaining 88.5% of the population has exclusive access to the other 88.5% of the funding. While I find that sort of approach to be divisive in nature, it's at least fair in application.

Fairness doesn't work that way, IMNSHO. Adding a second unfairness to a first doesn't make things fairer. As you say, exclusive funding requires extremely good justification; I don't see "Well, we already have this other exclusive funding policy." as an extremely good justification. Telling some white woman her bid couldn't be considered because 92% of the contracts went to other white people last year was unfair to her; also telling a black guy his bid can't be considered because 12% of the contracts are going to other black people this year is unfair to him; that's two unfair exclusions instead of one. Unfairness doesn't annihilate like matter and antimatter just because we choose to conceptualize it by lumping people into arbitrary groups any way we please and then imagining the unfairness happens to our grammatical fictions rather than to flesh-and-blood people.

Fair point, but I think you may have misinterpreted my intent. Or more to the point, I didn't communicate it well. I don't actually support that 11.5% go to black people and 88.5% go to every else approach. I still think that's a bad idea overall. I just find it marginally less unfair than giving one group a larger slice of the odds. I'd really prefer to just make the evaluations blind in the first place.

With race this point is academic -- nobody is going to actually impose a "Black people may not get more than 11.5% of public spending." rule. Sex is where the rubber meets the road. All the time we see sex-exclusionary policies imposed for the sake of the imaginary fairness of equalizing the amount of sex-discrimination. Girls who want to compete in boys' sports leagues are barred, even though having less testosterone during puberty than the other players isn't an unfair advantage, merely because it's perceived as unfair for boys to compete in girls' sports leagues because having more testosterone during puberty than the other players really is an unfair advantage. Transmen are pointlessly excluded from men's rooms because the legislators had reasons to exclude transwomen from women's rooms and felt "Everyone must use the room of his or her biological sex" was magically less unfair than "Biological males must use the men's room." Women's rooms are an affirmative action program: a special service society does for women because ameliorating the harm male monkeys have been doing to female monkeys for the last thirty million years has been widely considered an extremely good justification. Requiring there to also be male-only spaces women are excluded from in the name of being fair to both sexes amounts to saying "It's fair to discriminate against women in a new way because women have always been discriminated against in old ways." That doesn't seem to me an extremely good justification.

Also true. Although, I also don't have a particularly strong objection to having sex-separated services and spaces in place. Yes, you have a point with respect to sports, in that there's not an actual risk to men's sports if women are allowed to give it a go. The likelihood of even the very best female athletes being capable of performing at a male-competitive level is extremely small. The same isn't true going the other direction.

But when it comes to showers and prisons and the provision of intimate care... well... male monkey behavior be damned. I know several men who would be quite uncomfortable to have a woman walk in and ogle them while they're showering naked. And if a guy is uncomfortable being patted down by a woman, then I think he should have every right to be handled by a person of the same sex.

Although... I also think the reasons are probably very different. A woman doesn't want a man providing a body search or intimate care because of concern that the man might get turned on, and she doesn't want to be the object of his sexualization. A man doesn't want a woman providing a body search or intimate care because of concern that the man might get turned on and that would be embarrassing...

 

[Emily Lake]

Man who has never been a parent claims that generational trauma has no impact on childrearing across generations.

Can you explain what generational trauma is?

 

[Emily Lake]

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?

Why do you assume that inner city students are black, and correlated their melanin content specifically with being inferior?

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Math... The average score of a group of 20 students doesn't actually change the score of the highest-scoring student. Changing the average for the class doesn't harm those above average students at all.

 

[Patooka]

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

Open and blatant class discrimination. In more civilized societies, a college education is considered the right of all citizens.

Which "civilized" countries do you have in mind where there are no admissions requirements for university education?

Australia for starters. You can get a bachelors in Supply Chain Logistics at the University of Melbourne. Ask me how I know.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Sure, sure, because 13 year olds are worldly wise, and well informed about the long term impact of their immediate feelings. Do you even understand the health risks associated with chest binders? They're just as bad as old-school corsets that deform ribs and limit breathing, and can result in stress fractures of the ribs.

Would you support a school providing corsets to young girls who felt that their parent's wouldn't support their desire for an itty-bitty waist while their bodies are still growing? Would you view it as child abuse if a parent refused to allow their growing child to wear a tight and restricting corset?

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Ahh, so you have insight into the secret policy positions that they secretly are planning for their Illuminati-esque world takeover?

You know the far-right nutjobs say the same thing about you, don't you? That progressives have secret policies that they can't say in public, but trust them, they know all about those secret plans to turn the US into a communist shithole...