Race-neutral policies and principles that support racism

[laughing dog]

A hypothetical "whataboutism".

Not whataboutism, but strong suspicion of hypocrisy.

When you pose a hypothetical to sniff out hypocrisy, that is a form of "whataboutism"

It's neither. It's directly related to the question about hiring for city positions.

It was not about the OP topic.

 

[Trausti]

When you pose a hypothetical to sniff out hypocrisy, that is a form of "whataboutism"

No. It's called an analogy. A basic form of argument.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

When you pose a hypothetical to sniff out hypocrisy, that is a form of "whataboutism"

No. It's called an analogy. A basic form of argument.

Whataboutism isn't an argument.

The op is asking for examples of X and discussion of mechanisms of X.

"I don't think X is valid because ... so I can't give a list" is a valid response. So is "your premises are wrong because ..."

"Oh yeah, well what about Y" is whataboutism. It might be valid if I started off saying "white people are the worst because blah blah blah..." But I didn't.

The discussion is about a technical complexity of sub-class of race neutral policies that support or prolong the effects of historical racism. That's an abstract idea of some complexity where I gave a concrete example in my last post.

If you are still having problems getting why whataboutism isn't the proper way to respond, I recommend to keep reading over and over or creating a different thread.

 

[ruby sparks]

I live in a town like most suburbs with few minorities, a history of racist policies due to redlining etc, and current racism by a few. Race neutral policies like keeping out outsiders/preferring insiders are supported by racists in order to keep the status quo race structure, i.e. don't grow minority population. The vast majority of persons in town are not overt racists and merely want fair practices and a significant number are okay with employees being lifelong residents. Example: teachers and school administrators; the policy is to prefer teachers and administrators having lived in town and attended the school system. The vast majority of such persons are white. As outside minorities move into town, their urban minority backgrounds are understood less well. Many are from NYC areas. There is definitely a group of minority persons saying this policy is bad and they are not understood well. They have actively spoken out. They are not insulted. That is a false claim.

Likewise, your claim about local representation is false. Not only is it false in my town, it's false in many, many others where redlining or segregation was a thing, went away, and now minority subpopulation is growing.

This is an interesting example. On the face of it, I might or might not know enough in order to agree that it supports racism. It could, that's for sure.

What I would say is that hiring people because they grew up in the town could be a somewhat questionable criteria. If, as you say, there's been a more recent influx of residents from elsewhere, but they are not getting jobs in the town on that basis, it seems a bit odd. If they are minorities moving into a town that is mostly white, it might even smell a bit fishy. But your example is lacking detail and is a bit anecdotal.

As to something else you mentioned, police silence, if you mean police silence about things to do with racism that should be attended to then that silence and passivity would support racism, yes. But again, I'm not sure what sort of police silence you are citing, or whether it's happening.

 

[laughing dog]

When you pose a hypothetical to sniff out hypocrisy, that is a form of "whataboutism"

No. It's called an analogy. A basic form of argument.

Not when the analogy has little or nothing to do with actual discussion.

 

[ronburgundy]

People have brought up individuals being personally biased towards ingroups, which is not directly relevant to the OP. Informal individual bias is one thing and often unavoidable. Though is of a different nature and psychology when done by minority group members, especially recent immigrants, than when done by majority group members. The former often being a type of self defense due to vulnerability, while the latter being a more offensive (in both senses) form of racism that presumes other inferiority.

Organizations having formal policies bias against racial groups do that is another matter and is avoidable by the formal nature of the policies. Again though, the minority-majority status of those involved determines the underlying psychology, motives, and thus ethics of it.

And organization that get any benefits from the government who have such policies is unacceptable and illegal, unless it can be argued that it is countering injustices that will self perpetuate indefinitely without overt correction.

Getting to situation the OP discusses, if the formal policies are technically neutral but defacto racially biased as a consequence of overt systematic racism in the past, then those policies are at minimum suspect and probably should be unacceptable when the neutral criteria has a direct relationship to the past racist criteria. The clearest example of the latter are legacy criteria where some racial groups were denied the ability to have been a legacy in the past.

Where it becomes acceptable is when a neutral criteria, like education level for a job, happens to skew by race and in large part due to past racism, but the racism was at societal level indirectly impacting education via mechanism that the deciding institution had no control over. But even here, there should be a clear scientifically grounded strong and direct relation between the neutral criteria and the position it's being used for, otherwise bogus "neutral" criteria of no logical relevance will get used as racial proxies.

So, the OPs example of having to be "homegrown", I would say is invalid especially for any town that had in it's past (even going back a century) strong racist impediments to who lived in that town, but also invalid even for a town where the racial skew is more incidental, b/c there simply is not sound evidence base to assert that the criteria has a strong causal impact on the quality of the job the person would do. In fact, a stronger argument could be made that homegrown people are the least objective and fair regarding the people and issues in their town, due to a lifetime of biases including ones inherited in a "Hatfield- Mcoy" sort of way.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

When you pose a hypothetical to sniff out hypocrisy, that is a form of "whataboutism"

You use the word "whataboutism" to dismiss any difficult question that explores the root instead of the surface of any issue.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I live in a town like most suburbs with few minorities, a history of racist policies due to redlining etc, and current racism by a few. Race neutral policies like keeping out outsiders/preferring insiders are supported by racists in order to keep the status quo race structure, i.e. don't grow minority population. The vast majority of persons in town are not overt racists and merely want fair practices and a significant number are okay with employees being lifelong residents. Example: teachers and school administrators; the policy is to prefer teachers and administrators having lived in town and attended the school system. The vast majority of such persons are white. As outside minorities move into town, their urban minority backgrounds are understood less well. Many are from NYC areas. There is definitely a group of minority persons saying this policy is bad and they are not understood well. They have actively spoken out. They are not insulted. That is a false claim.

Likewise, your claim about local representation is false. Not only is it false in my town, it's false in many, many others where redlining or segregation was a thing, went away, and now minority subpopulation is growing.

This is an interesting example. On the face of it, I might or might not know enough in order to agree that it supports racism. It could, that's for sure.

What I would say is that hiring people because they grew up in the town could be a somewhat questionable criteria. If, as you say, there's been a more recent influx of residents from elsewhere, but they are not getting jobs in the town on that basis, it seems a bit odd. If they are minorities moving into a town that is mostly white, it might even smell a bit fishy. But your example is lacking detail and is a bit anecdotal.

Let's suppose the town under discussion was 100% white in the 50's with no hispanics...
By 2000, it was 94% "white" with single digit % hispanics: 2% white hispanics.
By 2020, it was 90% white including 4% white hispanics. 10% non-white.

Let's suppose there are qualified minority potential candidates from nearby cities...some live in town and some do not. The racial make up of nearby cities is far more diverse. Let's suppose nearby cities are 50% white for sake of discussion.

Let's suppose the average age of managers is 40. Preference to a managerial candidate born in town might mean birth in 1980. Let's suppose town at that time was 98% white, meaning probability of indirect white preference is 98% on average.

As to something else you mentioned, police silence, if you mean police silence about things to do with racism that should be attended to then that silence and passivity would support racism, yes. But again, I'm not sure what sort of police silence you are citing, or whether it's happening.

I get what you are saying. I suppose I meant generally the blue code of silence. If you have a racist cop, you can't say anything. If someone does something illegal or unfair to minorities, you have to hide it. Now, one could claim that reverse racialism could also be hidden and that could be true...but I think when you consider the interaction of police with minorities, the history, and whatever kind of anti-minority angst and inertia, it's predominately used to support racism rather than reverse racism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While this is supposedly race-neutral it's going on a characteristic not clearly related to the job and therefore should be regarded with skepticism.

Note that this can go both ways--the top 10% of graduating class admission standards are an attempt to discriminate in favor of blacks.

You need to carefully explain that reasoning and be explicit about your assumptions.

For example, in Wisconsin, the top 10% in each high school graduating class are automatically deemed qualified to be admitted to UW Madison. Outside of Milwaukee, high schools are overwhelming white.

Are you a fishmonger? Because you sure like red herrings!

The whole point of it is to make the top performers from the inner city schools admissible regardless of qualifications.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

People have brought up individuals being personally biased towards ingroups, which is not directly relevant to the OP. Informal individual bias is one thing and often unavoidable. Though is of a different nature and psychology when done by minority group members, especially recent immigrants, than when done by majority group members. The former often being a type of self defense due to vulnerability, while the latter being a more offensive (in both senses) form of racism that presumes other inferiority.

Organizations having formal policies bias against racial groups do that is another matter and is avoidable by the formal nature of the policies. Again though, the minority-majority status of those involved determines the underlying psychology, motives, and thus ethics of it.

And organization that get any benefits from the government who have such policies is unacceptable and illegal, unless it can be argued that it is countering injustices that will self perpetuate indefinitely without overt correction.

Getting to situation the OP discusses, if the formal policies are technically neutral but defacto racially biased as a consequence of overt systematic racism in the past, then those policies are at minimum suspect and probably should be unacceptable when the neutral criteria has a direct relationship to the past racist criteria. The clearest example of the latter are legacy criteria where some racial groups were denied the ability to have been a legacy in the past.

Where it becomes acceptable is when a neutral criteria, like education level for a job, happens to skew by race and in large part due to past racism, but the racism was at societal level indirectly impacting education via mechanism that the deciding institution had no control over. But even here, there should be a clear scientifically grounded strong and direct relation between the neutral criteria and the position it's being used for, otherwise bogus "neutral" criteria of no logical relevance will get used as racial proxies.

So, the OPs example of having to be "homegrown", I would say is invalid especially for any town that had in it's past (even going back a century) strong racist impediments to who lived in that town, but also invalid even for a town where the racial skew is more incidental, b/c there simply is not sound evidence base to assert that the criteria has a strong causal impact on the quality of the job the person would do. In fact, a stronger argument could be made that homegrown people are the least objective and fair regarding the people and issues in their town, due to a lifetime of biases including ones inherited in a "Hatfield- Mcoy" sort of way.

I agree with you.

To clarify, I do not know the source of the "homegrown" policy. For all I know, it became an instituted preference as a reaction to removal of other things like redlining or reaction to fears of integration. Also, I doubt there is a monolithic intent behind the policy. Some people might assume the town is just better or individuals from town may have expertise. There are definitely also SOME racists in the town who would have supported such policy for racist reasons. They are a minority, pun intended.

 

[laughing dog]

While this is supposedly race-neutral it's going on a characteristic not clearly related to the job and therefore should be regarded with skepticism.

Note that this can go both ways--the top 10% of graduating class admission standards are an attempt to discriminate in favor of blacks.

You need to carefully explain that reasoning and be explicit about your assumptions.

For example, in Wisconsin, the top 10% in each high school graduating class are automatically deemed qualified to be admitted to UW Madison. Outside of Milwaukee, high schools are overwhelming white.

Are you a fishmonger? Because you sure like red herrings!

Are you are proctologist? Because you sure pull out lots of turds of responses.

The whole point of it is to make the top performers from the inner city schools admissible regardless of qualifications.

My point was that your unsubstantiated observation is not born out in Wisconsin. I suspect it is not true for other places as well.

You conflate "inner city" with blacks - a bigoted observation. You assume that "inner city" students in the top 10% are not qualified but students from rural areas in the top 10% are - a bigoted observation given your conflation of "inner city" with "blacks".

 

[J842P]

Likewise, your claim about local representation is false. Not only is it false in my town, it's false in many, many others where redlining or segregation was a thing, went away, and now minority subpopulation is growing.

I think I misunderstood your example. I had understood it to mean local residents not people who grow up in the town. That is much more suspect.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Likewise, your claim about local representation is false. Not only is it false in my town, it's false in many, many others where redlining or segregation was a thing, went away, and now minority subpopulation is growing.

I think I misunderstood your example. I had understood it to mean local residents not people who grow up in the town. That is much more suspect.

You might still be misunderstanding something. I am kind of wondering at the word "suspect." It makes me think you consider ulterior motives a thing that is necessary among all the policy-makers...like a conspiracy. I do think racists by and large want the policy but I also find it hard to believe most people who want the policy do so for intentionally racist reasons. What I've been trying to get at is that well-meaning people can advocate race neutral policy that supports (or maybe prolongs is a better word) racism. It's almost like inertia...but that's abstract. I like several posts where posters tried to delve into it. Their writings are better than mine.

 

[J842P]

Likewise, your claim about local representation is false. Not only is it false in my town, it's false in many, many others where redlining or segregation was a thing, went away, and now minority subpopulation is growing.

I think I misunderstood your example. I had understood it to mean local residents not people who grow up in the town. That is much more suspect.

You might still be misunderstanding something. I am kind of wondering at the word "suspect." It makes me think you consider ulterior motives a thing that is necessary among all the policy-makers...like a conspiracy. I do think racists by and large want the policy but I also find it hard to believe most people who want the policy do so for intentionally racist reasons. What I've been trying to get at is that well-meaning people can advocate race neutral policy that supports (or maybe prolongs is a better word) racism. It's almost like inertia...but that's abstract. I like several posts where posters tried to delve into it. Their writings are better than mine.

No I disagree with that. Supporting some policy that happens to result disproportionate racial representation is not racist. It does not support racism, and it does not prolong it. That is just a category error.

 

[J842P]

Though is of a different nature and psychology when done by minority group members, especially recent immigrants, than when done by majority group members. The former often being a type of self defense due to vulnerability, while the latter being a more offensive (in both senses) form of racism that presumes other inferiority.

Is it? How do you know?

 

[Metaphor]

People have brought up individuals being personally biased towards ingroups, which is not directly relevant to the OP. Informal individual bias is one thing and often unavoidable. Though is of a different nature and psychology when done by minority group members, especially recent immigrants, than when done by majority group members. The former often being a type of self defense due to vulnerability, while the latter being a more offensive (in both senses) form of racism that presumes other inferiority.

Why do you feel like some ingroup preferences are problematic and others are not? In particular, why is ingroup preference for one's own race "racism" as well as "presuming inferiority", if and only if your racial ingroup is the majority?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You might still be misunderstanding something. I am kind of wondering at the word "suspect." It makes me think you consider ulterior motives a thing that is necessary among all the policy-makers...like a conspiracy. I do think racists by and large want the policy but I also find it hard to believe most people who want the policy do so for intentionally racist reasons. What I've been trying to get at is that well-meaning people can advocate race neutral policy that supports (or maybe prolongs is a better word) racism. It's almost like inertia...but that's abstract. I like several posts where posters tried to delve into it. Their writings are better than mine.

No I disagree with that. Supporting some policy that happens to result disproportionate racial representation is not racist. It does not support racism, and it does not prolong it. That is just a category error.

What if it is prolonging disproportionate racial "representation" and the that past disproportionality was in part due to racism ... and some persons want it to continue due to their racism but not everyone ... and the effects of the disproportionality are suboptimal treatment of minorities?

 

[ruby sparks]

Supporting some policy that happens to result disproportionate racial representation is not racist. It does not support racism, and it does not prolong it.

I don't agree, necessarily. Suppose, hypothetically, you have been running a local sports team for many years, in a hypothetical all-white town. And suppose you have a strong preference for picking people who grew up in the town for the team, because (you feel) this enhances team loyalty and spirit, and garners strong support from local fans of the team. So when some black people move into the town, you don't pick them, not because they are black, but only because they did not grow up in the town.

So I think one question is, 'is having grown up in the town a reasonable criteria to set for the jobs in question'?

'Things that happen to result in different outcomes', even if not intended, can still be problematical in the same way that putting the ball in fairly into the slightly sloped table football game I illustrated earlier can be problematical.

Also, in a slightly different sense, if a status quo was arrived at via unfair discrimination, then neutral actions which serve to maintain that status quo do, effectively, prolong the discrimination.

Hypothetical: A town decides to award business grants only to businesses in the town that have been in operation for 50 years, as a way to reward those businesses for longstanding services to the community. But historically, it was very difficult, because of unfair discrimination, for blacks to buy or successfully operate businesses in that town. So, the more recent black business owners now missing out on the financial assistance could be said to be prolonging the unfairness, even if the grants are awarded for race-neutral reasons.

It just does depend on so many things, not least what events have preceded the current situation, but also the details of the current practices. Don's scenarios are, imo, too anecdotal and lacking detail to make a considered call on. As such, while they are interesting scenarios and bring up interesting issues, I'm not sure how much use it is to meaningfully comment on them, except in the hypothetical.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Are you a fishmonger? Because you sure like red herrings!

Are you are proctologist? Because you sure pull out lots of turds of responses.

The whole point of it is to make the top performers from the inner city schools admissible regardless of qualifications.

My point was that your unsubstantiated observation is not born out in Wisconsin. I suspect it is not true for other places as well.

You conflate "inner city" with blacks - a bigoted observation. You assume that "inner city" students in the top 10% are not qualified but students from rural areas in the top 10% are - a bigoted observation given your conflation of "inner city" with "blacks".

The purpose is those inner city kids. Note how the 10% bit started showing up where there was a backlash against discriminatory admissions policies. We never heard anything of it until then. It's a way to discriminate without appearing to discriminate, akin to things like height requirements to keep out women.

 

[laughing dog]

Are you are proctologist? Because you sure pull out lots of turds of responses.
My point was that your unsubstantiated observation is not born out in Wisconsin. I suspect it is not true for other places as well.

You conflate "inner city" with blacks - a bigoted observation. You assume that "inner city" students in the top 10% are not qualified but students from rural areas in the top 10% are - a bigoted observation given your conflation of "inner city" with "blacks".

The purpose is those inner city kids.

Please substantiate your claim of fact (the purpose) with a link.

Note how the 10% bit started showing up where there was a backlash against discriminatory admissions policies. We never heard anything of it until then. It's a way to discriminate without appearing to discriminate, akin to things like height requirements to keep out women.

It discriminates against anyone who did not graduate in the top 10% of their class - which means any student of any race, creed, color, religion, etc... who is not in the top 10% of their class is "discriminated" against.