The American Racism Split

[Davka]

Ah yes, the "isolated incidents."

When I say it was the "shit that's been happening," that convinced me there was a problem, it is because they can't seem to be able to be dismissed as "isolated incidents," when the public has finally started to scrutinize them. Seems we are having lots of incidents.

You tell us, how many incidents need to happen before they are no longer isolated?

More.

And then some more.

Wait - did I just repeat myself?

 

[ksen]

False, you're overstating it.

What most of us are saying is that the current level of racism isn't big enough to be an important issue, not that there's none at all.

- - - Updated - - -

All the shit that's been happening.

So they gripe enough and you think they must have a real case?

"they"

 

[ksen]

Ah yes, the "isolated incidents."

When I say it was the "shit that's been happening," that convinced me there was a problem, it is because they can't seem to be able to be dismissed as "isolated incidents," when the public has finally started to scrutinize them. Seems we are having lots of incidents.

You tell us, how many incidents need to happen before they are no longer isolated?

103

 

[SimpleDon]

We appear to have dug up a stinking, fetid mass of putrid anger over the past 6 months, starting with the protests in Ferguson and continuing via both professional and mainstream media. These events - a string of black males dead at the hands of police, and the resulting nationwide protests against police brutality - have exposed a rift in America that has remained mostly hidden over the past few decades.

On one side of the rift are those who believe that racism is still a serious problem in America, and one which needs to be addressed.

On the other side are those who believe that the only race-related problem in America is that some minorities would rather complain and play the "race card" than change their situation.

Both sides are entrenched. There seems to be no way forward. Compromise is unlikely, if not impossible.

So.

Now what?

I think that most people don't understand what the problem is and therefore where we have to go to solve it.

Most seem to believe we, collectively through the government, are trying to stamp out racism, to change people's attitudes.

There is no place in the public, government sphere to try to change people's private attitudes. Our "soft" racists, Davka's Racialists, here are not in any danger of formal societal censure. While their own personal racist attitudes strain what many consider to be acceptable in polite society, it is a personal attitude and is not illegal. You are free to be a racist if that is what you want.

But you aren't free to act on it in hiring or public accommodations, in the public sphere. Yes, these are limitations that we put on your right to exercise your racism. Proper limitations.

So this one part of what we are doing, enforcing the laws that try to prevent people's personal racist attitudes from acting in the public sphere.

The other part that we are trying to do is we are trying to eliminate the lingering effects of the legal racism of slavery and of the Jim Crow era. The negative effects of 400 hundred years of legal oppression of racial minorities, especially of African Americans, would be hard to eliminate in just two generations or so, if all of the legal hurdles were eliminated. But unfortunately a entirely new regime of laws were enacted to maintain the existence of the subordinate status of a group of people largely defined by race.

The abolition of slavery led not to removing subordinate status of the freed slaves but to the new legal suppression of them from the Jim Crow laws. Likewise the elimination of the Jim Crow laws was met with a new legal regime to maintain the legal suppression by race. It is a much more sophisticated and subtle approach, one that is vitally immune to the legal challenges that took down the Jim Crow laws. One that on the surface has nothing to do with race but which has the same effect as the Jim Crow laws did, denying them them the vote and other benefits of citizenship and relegating them to a racially segregated, subordinated existence.

When Ronald Reagan announced his War on Drugs in 1982 there were 300,000 people imprisoned in the US. Thirty years later there were more than 2 million. This increase in the prison population is made up disproportionately of minorities. The drug war became the new Jim Crow.

The rich and the middle class, overwhelmingly white, caught in the WoD, go into drug treatment programs. The poor, disproportionately minorities, are incarcerated. When they are released they can't vote, they can't get a decent job, they can't get many government services. Jim Crow would be proud.

======================

This is the problem. It is instructive to discuss why we have this third round of minority suppression. Why we have so many "soft" racists, racism apologists, when I think that everyone would agree that the number of overt racists are down considerably from forty years ago.

I will do this later, I am tired. But I will leave a hint.

We aren't fighting about racism, we are fighting a class war.

 

[Davka]

We aren't fighting about racism, we are fighting a class war.

A class war in which the Right has enlisted the aid of poor rural whites. Fuckin weird.

 

[EricK]

The best and most convincing stats are the ones that control for other variables, like socioeconomic status. The studies that show hiring bias towards black sounding names or female names especially stand out.

True.

But it makes me want to scream and tear my hair out that there are so many people who seem to need stats in the first place. It's as if there are people who live in a world so insulated from poverty and bigotry that they honestly don't see it. I have to wonder if they really want to see it.

It's like asking for stats to prove that talking on cell phones while driving is a common occurrence. Do you honestly not see that idiot in front of you, driving erratically and yammering away? I sure as hell do, almost every time I drive into town.

What do you mean by "common occurrence"? If you mean something like "On average, at least one occurrence each time I go into town" then you possibly don't need to collect stats. But if you mean something like "at least 1% of drivers" then you almost certainly would need to see properly collected stats, as I doubt you can accurately estimate the prevalence without doing a proper study.

Actually, even if you mean "On average, at least one occurrence each time I drive into town", you might need to collect proper stats, as confirmation bias will tend to make you remember the times you do see it and not recall the times you don't.

 

[Davka]

^^ yeah, that's the kind of attitude I'm talking about, right there.

"I don't see the problem, therefore it doesn't exist unless you can produce statistics. Because we all know that accurate statistics exist for everything that happens. Anywhere."

 

[ksen]

isn't there a logical fallacy called paralysis of analysis or something?

 

[Sarpedon]

I'm not certain I'm willing to make the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' racists anymore.

 

[arkirk]

I'm not even saying there are no incidents that need to be addressed. Rather, that they are isolated problems that don't warrant sweeping fixes. The "fixes" are at this point far worse than the problem they're trying to fix.

All the shit that's been happening.

So they gripe enough and you think they must have a real case?

...and here you demonstrate why you may as well believe that it is nonexistent.

You're missing the point--we've had a couple of big "racist" incidents where the only thing racial about them is a black victim. That's not evidence of a widespread problem.

It is when they're cops and they get away with it scott free...and their clean getaway is duly noted in the news. It isn't a "couple" of big racist incidents. It is a lot of racist incidents. The problem is there and the potential is fully active. You might as well face it.

 

[Unbeatable]

I think people can be convinced that racism is still a problem. I myself used to think it wasn't.

Sure, but how entrenched were you? Clearly, a lot of people look at the shit that's been happening and just filter it through their pre-existing ideological biases. Look at the people who actually go out of their way to argue that racism isn't a problem anymore, and you'll probably find additional similarities in their worldviews.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not even saying there are no incidents that need to be addressed. Rather, that they are isolated problems that don't warrant sweeping fixes. The "fixes" are at this point far worse than the problem they're trying to fix.

I completely understand that.

In fact, yours is probably the predominant view on the other side of the split. Some of us believe racism is still a major problem in America. We point to the fact that African-Americans are earning ~$1 for every ~$17 (iirc) that White Americans earn; that predominately Black pockets of poverty are commonplace across the nation, and a number of other indicators as evidence.

Th other side dismisses this evidence as inconclusive, and believes that racism is not a major problem in America, or even worthy of addressing as a whole. They are convinced that it's merely a string of isolated incidents.

These two views appear to be irreconcilable. I don't think either side will convince the other any time soon, and I don't see any evidence of a desire for compromise.

And some of us understand that data such as this is not proof of discrimination. When you dig into it race turns out not to be a factor, but rather their parents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The best and most convincing stats are the ones that control for other variables, like socioeconomic status. The studies that show hiring bias towards black sounding names or female names especially stand out.

I haven't heard of one with female names.

The black sounding name ones have a big problem: It doesn't matter what race the person doing the hiring is. I find it very hard to believe blacks are just as racist against blacks as whites. (Unless that value is zero.)

That strongly suggests that whatever's going on isn't racism.

 

[Davka]

I completely understand that.

In fact, yours is probably the predominant view on the other side of the split. Some of us believe racism is still a major problem in America. We point to the fact that African-Americans are earning ~$1 for every ~$17 (iirc) that White Americans earn; that predominately Black pockets of poverty are commonplace across the nation, and a number of other indicators as evidence.

Th other side dismisses this evidence as inconclusive, and believes that racism is not a major problem in America, or even worthy of addressing as a whole. They are convinced that it's merely a string of isolated incidents.

These two views appear to be irreconcilable. I don't think either side will convince the other any time soon, and I don't see any evidence of a desire for compromise.

And some of us understand that data such as this is not proof of discrimination. When you dig into it race turns out not to be a factor, but rather their parents.

Yes, because the numerous studies which show that employers are more likely to interview job-seekers with white-sounding names, even over those with slightly better resumes but black-sounding names, is due entirely to those applicant's parents. Ditto for studies that show the same thing for renting decent apartments. Racism plays no part whatsoever in the prevalence of poverty among African-Americans.

Oh, wait - I see what you're saying. Their parents were black, which is why they're black. Darn those callous melanin-rich parents for passing on that gene!

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The best and most convincing stats are the ones that control for other variables, like socioeconomic status. The studies that show hiring bias towards black sounding names or female names especially stand out.

I haven't heard of one with female names.

The black sounding name ones have a big problem: It doesn't matter what race the person doing the hiring is. I find it very hard to believe blacks are just as racist against blacks as whites. (Unless that value is zero.)

That strongly suggests that whatever's going on isn't racism.

Wrong again.

In a world inwhich Clarence Thomas not only lives but sits on the SCOTUS, you think that black folk won't uphold a racist system, no matter how much it hurts people who look like them, or even themselves?

None are immune to a racist system in which they are born and raised. But you can be treated for the condition and thankfully more and more people have taken and are taking "the healing waters."

 

[EricK]

^^ yeah, that's the kind of attitude I'm talking about, right there.

"I don't see the problem, therefore it doesn't exist unless you can produce statistics. Because we all know that accurate statistics exist for everything that happens. Anywhere."

So how do you know it exists? Should I believe everything you say, just because you say it? I don't see people talking on the phone in the car nearly as often as you claim that you do .Obviously I live in a completely different place. But without statistics I have no way to judge which of our experiences is more typical. I don't even know whether you are accurate in your statement of what you see.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We aren't fighting about racism, we are fighting a class war.

A class war in which the Right has enlisted the aid of poor rural whites. Fuckin weird.

It's not weird. Most of those poor rural whites are racists.

 

[J842P]

The best and most convincing stats are the ones that control for other variables, like socioeconomic status. The studies that show hiring bias towards black sounding names or female names especially stand out.

I haven't heard of one with female names.

The black sounding name ones have a big problem: It doesn't matter what race the person doing the hiring is. I find it very hard to believe blacks are just as racist against blacks as whites. (Unless that value is zero.)

That strongly suggests that whatever's going on isn't racism.

I disagree. Prejudices can inhabit those they target especially in cases where that prejudice is systemic in the culture.

 

[thebeave]

A class war in which the Right has enlisted the aid of poor rural whites. Fuckin weird.

It's not weird. Most of those poor rural whites are racists.

Citation please. And aren't you racially profiling poor rural whites by saying that? Which makes you racist, yes?

 

[Davka]

^^ yeah, that's the kind of attitude I'm talking about, right there.

"I don't see the problem, therefore it doesn't exist unless you can produce statistics. Because we all know that accurate statistics exist for everything that happens. Anywhere."

So how do you know it exists? Should I believe everything you say, just because you say it? I don't see people talking on the phone in the car nearly as often as you claim that you do .Obviously I live in a completely different place. But without statistics I have no way to judge which of our experiences is more typical. I don't even know whether you are accurate in your statement of what you see.

EricK, you live in the UK and clearly have very little experience with life in the USA - just as I have very little experience with life in the UK. I only know what i see in movies and on TV, which is fairly stereotypical "British" behavior dumbed down for overseas consumption, and what I hear on BBC radio.

I would never presume to tell Brits that they need to document any cultural or political issue in the UK in order to talk about it intelligently. I simply don't know enough about soccer hooligans, or National Health (i think that's what it's called) or frankly any other issue in the UK to discuss it in an informed manner. Hell, we still have the 1930s concept of the Club Tie, "pip-pip-cheerio, eh-wot?" stuffy public school Brit, who likely died out with Churchill. And WTF is the deal with cricket, anyways?

I would never presume to demand statistics from a Brit talking about social ills in G.B. I wouldn't take her word for it, but I wouldn't demand proof either. I would accept the information as one person's take on their country, and move on.