AthenaAwakened
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I asked first
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Racism in society (or The Incredible Whiteness of Being) (or 50 Shades of Blackness)
- Thread starter AthenaAwakened
- Start date
I asked first
1. Stamp out current existing and provable racist discrimination.
2. Encourage integration of races, inter-racial marriage, etc, where possible. Address tribalism and us vs them thinking and encourage people to spot it in themselves and others. We have all felt some degree of this against us and we should be able to use that to have sympathy to others it happens to. This is the heart of racism, as well as the heart of all bigotry, and needs to be addressed directly.
3. Uplift and educate the poor, regardless of race. Since there are more poor black people than poor white people, this will uplift more black people than white people, but won't do so in a racist manner.
It should not matter what skin pigmentation you are born with, and we should not treat you differently based on it. This isn't rocket science.
Pushing race quotas just to try to have equal numbers of race A and race B at a particular level of your chosen measurement is blatantly racist and is going to do more harm than good.
I just finished writing that racism was bad and makes everyone worse off, on average.
Slavery is not a positive sum institution. It is not neutral sum. It is negative sum. The people who used slaves may have come out ahead economically, but the rest of society didn't.
The U.S. would have been wealthier than it is right now if slavery and racism had never existed. If the only way cotton and tobacco plantations were viable is because they used slave labour, then they were a gross misdirection of available human capital that should have been invested in goods and services people were willing to buy at their real prices.
Moving on: precisely in what way does society benefit by creating a permanent underclass of citizens? The simple answer: it doesn't. It can't. Every Black person that was hamstrung by racism is in turn less productive than they could have been, produced fewer goods and services, and was more likely to become part of a criminal underclass.
America has welfare measures, and to the extent that racism increased the number of people on welfare (it did), then America is worse off. But even if America had no welfare whatever, the wages of racism would still have to be paid privately. Every time any Black person who could have done well at school but didn't because of racism, all of society is deprived of what that mind could have accomplished.
Racism means people do not make the best possible choice when choosing someone for a role. An orchestra is at its best possible when it chooses the best possible players; if they are prejudiced against female musicians, and sometimes choose a man over a slightly-better woman, the entire orchestra suffers for it. I understand baseball was once segregated. That is absolute madness, and everyone was made poorer because of it. A baseball team should pick the best people it can for its composition; categorically rejecting a race means they're not doing that, and fans are watching less-good baseball as a result.
Racism made the U.S. a poorer nation morally and economically. It is a negative sum game.
Very good point, and one I rarely see being made. I find it surprising that this point hasn't been pushed harder in anti-discrimination movements.
Gracious goodness, there's nothing esoteric about it. No-one has rejected the premise or conclusions.
AthenaAwakened
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And the criteria for provability would be?
How would you do this? Offer tax breaks to people in interracial marriage? Make mandatory in school classes in tribalism awareness? So the system of white supremacy that is centuries old can be eradicated if we could all be more sympathetic?
How?
How will we know we have reached equity and equality? What is the physical goal?
laughing dog
Contributor
People have. More importantly, neither the premise nor conclusions are relevant. What might have occurred in the absence of racism is not relevant to addressing the actual situation now. For some obscure reason, people think AA is some form of atonement by and punishment for white people. It isn't.
i) Do you reject the idea that America would be richer economically and morally had racism not existed?
ii) Since AA is meant to address the past effects of racism, what the past effects of racism were is directly and centrally relevant
laughing dog
Contributor
Economically, probably yes. Morally, I would have no idea.
The past effects are that it puts the victims and their descendents at a relative disadvantage. It is meant to ameliorate that disadvantage. The fact that the US might be richer without past racism is not relevant for two reasons. First, there was racism. Second, the victims and their descendents are at disadvantage today, regardless of the overall wealth of the US.
I would say by definition a country that did not have slavery and racism in its past is morally better than a country that did, other things being equal.
One way past racism impoverished the U.S. is that people were selected partly on characteristics that had nothing to do with merit (like race). Turning around and selecting people partly on characteristics that have nothing to do with merit (like race) can only have the same result. Everyone will be the poorer for it.
laughing dog
Contributor
I don't find statements like "Country X is morally better than Country Y" very informative or useful, but that is just me.
Since AA does not ignore merit (or at least, not if done properly), I don't think your response has much relevance to properly done AA.
Axulus
Veteran Member
And how's it working out? Is it actually ameliorating that disadvantage? Should grades also be given in an affirmative action manner to further ameliorate that disadvantage?
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He said it considers factors other than merit, not that it ignores merit.
laughing dog
Contributor
I think you need to go back, take some deep breaths, count to 100, and then reread those posts. Because neither remark deals with the actual content nor the logical consequences of the posts you quote.
The best way to close the gaps is to quit pretending they are the result of discrimination. So long as you provide a scapegoat the real issues won't be addressed.
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Yup. Poverty is the real issue. Address that.
I never claimed AA ignored merit, so I don't understand why you think I did. What I said was
AA selects people based partly on characteristics that have nothing to do with merit. I don't think I could have said it more clearly.
AthenaAwakened
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You all do realize people get all kinds of jobs, slots in schools, perks, etc., for all kinds of reasons that do not have a damn thing to do with merit.
And I guarantee that everyone on this board has gotten breaks in life that they did not merit, did not earn, so let us get off the merit high horse, shall we?
The problem is some here find the idea that minorities, particularly black folk, are getting a break because of race. It really is that specific.
The above was just in case certain people ever wonder how what they type here actually reads
And I guarantee that everyone on this board has gotten breaks in life that they did not merit, did not earn, so let us get off the merit high horse, shall we?
The problem is some here find the idea that minorities, particularly black folk, are getting a break because of race. It really is that specific.
You have been told that it is wrong to discriminate, period. And if blacks can't be discriminated against, then they can't be discriminated for either. it's only fair.
There is no history, no mitigating circumstances, nothing else at all to consider. It is just that simple.
And if a black man catches a break than might be in any way traced back to his race then take it form him and grind that break into the ground because it is wrong for him to have it.
Now all the hell that same black man catches everyday is all in his head, or it isn't because of race, or it is isn't nearly as bad as he is making out because black folk are too dumb to know their own life experiences. Anyway, that is not the problem with race today. Not incarceration, not high infant mortality rates, not over-representation in a plethora of bad stats for black folk, but that a white kid somewhere might have to accept a spring admission instead of a fall one to university because some AA policy gave his or her fall slot to a black kid who is too damn dumb to go to college anyway.
There is no history, no mitigating circumstances, nothing else at all to consider. It is just that simple.
And if a black man catches a break than might be in any way traced back to his race then take it form him and grind that break into the ground because it is wrong for him to have it.
Now all the hell that same black man catches everyday is all in his head, or it isn't because of race, or it is isn't nearly as bad as he is making out because black folk are too dumb to know their own life experiences. Anyway, that is not the problem with race today. Not incarceration, not high infant mortality rates, not over-representation in a plethora of bad stats for black folk, but that a white kid somewhere might have to accept a spring admission instead of a fall one to university because some AA policy gave his or her fall slot to a black kid who is too damn dumb to go to college anyway.
The above was just in case certain people ever wonder how what they type here actually reads
Of course they do. And to the extent that they do, the rest of us are impoverished by it.
Every single time the filling of a role is influenced by factors other than merit, we are all impoverished. The person with more merit would have done the job better (otherwise by definition they wouldn't have more merit for the job).
Why? I was born with a certain level of intelligence and curiosity, and so I was the first in my family to go to University. I did not choose my genes or my personality, but it is still better for everyone that the people with the highest intelligence and academic aptitude get into University, even though people don't earn their genetic endowments.
Pointing to other factors that also impoverish us does not mean we should institutionally entrench a system of race-based discrimination that will also impoverish us.
I cannot stop the untalented children of celebrities riding on their parents' coattails (I'm looking firmly at Melissa Rivers and the Smith/Pinkett children), but the correct response is not to say 'me too' and engage in more society-harming behaviour by promoting race-based selection.
No. Some minorities, like Asians, are being actively harmed by it. And society as a whole is being impoverished by it. I can't stress this enough. 'Giving someone a break' when that is accomplished by rewarding a slot that based on ability or merit alone would otherwise have gone to someone else actively harms society as a whole, in the same way past racism has harmed the U.S. economically.
Not a "white kid somewhere". Lots of White kids, and Asian kids, all over America, every year, indefinitely. And not your fantasy of a 'spring admission' over a fall one, but being excluded from their University of choice because that University chose to admit someone based partly on race.
That's how it reads to you.
When somebody is admitted to a school or refused admission based on their race. When somebody is denied a bank loan based on race. When somebody is stopped by police based on race. I can think of many other examples, and I think you can too, where we'll all agree something is being done based on race, and you seem to be the only one here who is saying that is sometimes a good thing.
Parenting. Social awareness groups. Maybe channel some of those anti-racism PSAs in this direction. I'm sure if we sat and thought about it we could come up with a lot of good ideas. That stops immediately when we instead break off into groups and work against each other. Saying things like "Black people can't be racist, because I define it that way" doesn't help. Everybody can fall into racism and other forms of bigotry and if you refuse to see that, there isn't much we can do to help you. If you insist on placing racism exclusively in an Us vs Them paradigm, you have lost before you started, because you have alienated those who you wish to change.
Off the top of my head? Universal single payer health care. Guaranteed minimum income. Food banks. Public funding for public schools up to and including the university level. All of this helps, and none of it should have anything to do with race.
When you have a disparity in wealth between racial "groups", uplifting the poor will diminish that disparity, and do so in a non-racist manner.
If you instead focus on race and help those of Race A, whether or not they need it, and deny such help to those of Race B, whether or not they need it, do you really think you'll be doing a whole lot of good? Or will you just be justifying Race B's negative attitude towards Race A?
Yeah, people shouldn't be getting a break because of their race. That's racism.
We aren't KKKers, we are after a colorblind world.
Universal health care: Unfortunately, I don't like what I see here or abroad with it. We also don't need it--Obamacare's subsidies come close enough.
Guaranteed minimum income: I'd like to see it but I don't think the economy can take it yet.
Food banks: They wouldn't be needed if the welfare system did it's job better.
Public funding of university education: I partially agree here. There should be inexpensive state colleges but they shouldn't be free. We used to have this but they've taken the axe to the budgets, driving student costs way up. Wind it back 20 years.