White Liberals Present Themselves as Less Competent in Interactions with African-Americans

[Jolly_Penguin]

This thread, it agrees with my lived experiences. Growing up poor and Hispanic, I came to the conclusion: conservatives say you need Jesus, progressives think they ARE Jesus. They do think that they people they are helping are their inferiors, and that the people they are helping should "tug their forelock" so to speak, and show proper thanks for the help by acknowledging the superiority of the progressives helping them. Oh, and if you don't show them proper respect, they get very upset at you. Oh and you should hear the racist terms they use on minorities who spurn their self-appointed superiority.

I've seen the same. If you don't fall into their appointed thought groups, and don't think as you are expected to, you may even get called out as racist or something, against your "own people" and what is "good for you" by white privileged people who think they know what's best or want to virtue signal.

The other lived experience is seeing laughing dog deliberately misinterpret Loren's post. He does that to lots of people.

We share a similar lived experience there too. Haha

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

What's the average educational attainment of "Greg", "Emily" and "Lakisha"?

Look at what the Freakonomics guys say about this. Lakishas are on average uneducated.

It was resumes, submitted for genuinely advertised posts. The resumes were identical except for the name. Have another go, mister racism-denier.

You were endorsing race proxies earlier. What changes here? If a race proxy means somebody is poor, uneducated or dealing with more hardship, they may well be worse able to perform the job you are hiring for. They may be more likely to have stole that expensive car they are driving. They may be less likely to afford the stuff in this store, so maybe you ought to shadow them to make sure they aren't shoplifting. Why else would they be here, right?

If you want to act with race discrimination proxy to identify downtrodden, poor, uneducated etc, and make such presumptions based on race, that ugly door swings both ways. Some apparently also wish to do so with intelligence, and apparently they aren't all on the right.

How about we simply don't use race proxies at all, and treat people as individuals and for who they actually are, instead of making presumptions based on what race grouping you associate them with?

We could help the poor, with financial aid and opportunity. We could educate everyone who needs it and may not be able to afford it. We could make the streets safer for everyone, and have universal health care for everyone. Race is irrelevant to this. Obama's daughter isn't worse off than the white kid born in the trailer park.

 

[Politesse]

What's the average educational attainment of "Greg", "Emily" and "Lakisha"?

Look at what the Freakonomics guys say about this. Lakishas are on average uneducated.

It was resumes, submitted for genuinely advertised posts. The resumes were identical except for the name. Have another go, mister racism-denier.

You were endorsing race proxies earlier. What changes here? If a race proxy means somebody is poor, uneducated or dealing with more hardship, they may well be worse able to perform the job you are hiring for. They may be more likely to have stole that expensive car they are driving. They may be less likely to afford the stuff in this store, so maybe you ought to shadow them to make sure they aren't shoplifting. Why else would they be here, right?

If you want to act with race discrimination proxy to identify downtrodden, poor, uneducated etc, and make such presumptions based on race, that ugly door swings both ways. Some apparently also wish to do so with intelligence, and apparently they aren't all on the right.

How about we simply don't use race proxies at all, and treat people as individuals instead of making presumptions based on what race grouping you associate them with?

We could help the poor, with financial aid and opportunity. We could educate everyone who needs it and may not be able to afford it. We could make the streets safer for everyone, and have universal health care for everyone. Race is irrelevant to this. Obama's daughter isn't worse off than the white kid born in the trailer park.

How are you supposed to "help poverty" if you are ignorant of very important facts about the lives of the poor such as how their perceived race has affected them? How are you "Respecting an individual" if you are erasing or trying to erase a large part of their lived experience? My life is impossible to understand without understanding the things people assume about me because of my skin color. It is not the only thing that is important, but it a thing that is and has often been important. How can you claim to understand and care about me without it?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

No surprise. An awful lot of the liberal ideas about racial issues actually amount to saying we should ignore the inferiority of minorities rather than saying they are equal.

Wow. Simply wow.

Indeed. I am guessing you purposefully misinterpreted what Loren wrote, but what he wrote is indeed sad. Ties in with the soft bigotry of low expectations, as well as the eggshelll walking effect.

Explain what Loren actually meant?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Nevermind, don't care. Back to not commenting in PD.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

to "help poverty" if you are ignorant of very important facts about the lives of the poor such as how their perceived race has affected them?

You can address poverty by providing economic opportunity and aid based on income level. You can, you know, care about their poverty and help fix it, with education and opportunity. I see no reason to care about their skin colour. I see basing this help on their skin colour as outright racist.

How are you "Respecting an individual" if you are erasing or trying to erase a large part of their lived experience? My life is impossible to understand without understanding the things people assume about me because of my skin color. It is not the only thing that is important, but it a thing that is and has often been important. How can you claim to understand and care about me without it?

I don't respect anyone for their race, nor do I claim to understand everything about them that is irrelevant to me. I don't need to know about your hobbies, blood type, or shoe size to address your economic or educational status either.

I find the idea of race identity rather disgusting. Maybe I see it that way because I'm not a purebred anything, and am mixed. When I go to the Philippines, where I was born, I sometimes get sneered at and presumed privileged for looking too yellow. When I go to China, I sometimes get sneered at and presumed to be poor because I am too brown. When I go to the southern USA, I may get sneered at if I date a white girl and get a bunch of presumptions for being "asian". When I come on this forum, I get presumed by my writing to be white and sneered at for that, including more than once being told I can't possibly be in "any sort of minority" (despite being nearly a lone voice here with my position). It would be much nicer if people didn't presume anything based on race, would it not? We can discourage rather than encourage it. We can do that in part by not "helping groups" instead of individuals. You could be purple with pink stripes for all I care.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here is a 2017 meta-analysis of 21 similar studies:

Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/11/1706255114.full

This is real, Loren. Repeatedly evidenced, not assumed. It's ongoing and commonplace. And since you have been shown other studies like this, and others of a related type, many, many times on this forum, you already know it to be the case, you just prefer to pretend otherwise.

Which assumes the studies are finding real discrimination. The vast majority of the research fails to control for simple things and isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Bollocks. I mean, you hadn't even read the first one and said something irrelevant about different educational attainments, not even realising that the names were the only variables. You're a sad old racism denier, that's what you are.

- - - Updated - - -

What's the average educational attainment of "Greg", "Emily" and "Lakisha"?

Look at what the Freakonomics guys say about this. Lakishas are on average uneducated.

It was resumes, submitted for genuinely advertised posts. The resumes were identical except for the name. Have another go, mister racism-denier.

You were endorsing race proxies earlier. What changes here? If a race proxy means somebody is poor, uneducated or dealing with more hardship, they may well be worse able to perform the job you are hiring for. They may be more likely to have stole that expensive car they are driving. They may be less likely to afford the stuff in this store, so maybe you ought to shadow them to make sure they aren't shoplifting. Why else would they be here, right?

If you want to act with race discrimination proxy to identify downtrodden, poor, uneducated etc, and make such presumptions based on race, that ugly door swings both ways. Some apparently also wish to do so with intelligence, and apparently they aren't all on the right.

How about we simply don't use race proxies at all, and treat people as individuals and for who they actually are, instead of making presumptions based on what race grouping you associate them with?

We could help the poor, with financial aid and opportunity. We could educate everyone who needs it and may not be able to afford it. We could make the streets safer for everyone, and have universal health care for everyone. Race is irrelevant to this. Obama's daughter isn't worse off than the white kid born in the trailer park.

Again, I don't think I understand what you're getting at in a lot of that.

Do you accept (unlike Loren) that those studies consistently show anti-black racism in job hiring, or not? If you don't, then perhaps I can see where you're coming from about race being an irrelevant factor, because like Loren you don't really believe that particular type of discrimination is routinely happening based on race. If on the other hand you accept it's routinely happening based on race, how is race merely a proxy?

By the way, you asked me to give an example of something that could be done for disadvantaged groups and I suggested outreach. Did you respond to that? I may have missed it. Are you against even that type of affirmative action? If I had to guess, I'd say you are.

Look, I agree with you that in an ideal world, it would be better if race was irrelevant and every issue was treated on an individual basis, free of that consideration and using only other criteria instead. It's a great idea. In the real world, I'm not convinced that pretending racism not commonplace, or alternatively accepting that it is but that taking positive action to address it, does more harm than good, even allowing for things like the liberal benevolent racism that the OP study may represent. I think taking positive action does more good than harm, overall, and would do a lot more good if it wasn't for the stubborn, self-interested resistance it meets from those in the majority who fear change because that they might lose some of their racial advantage, which is what a lot of objections to positive action amount to, even if those aren't your reasons.

By the way, I agree, up to a point, that taking action for social justice based on socioeconomics would, in practice, be better than doing it by race, especially in America where there are very complex responses to the latter, leading to the particular type of innate resistance (and in many cases backlash) to the idea by the majority (whites). But that doesn't mean I agree that racial issues should be left out of the equation entirely, because that would be to deny that they are a real part part of the problem. But race could be pragmatically and usefully de-emphasised, yes, not least because it's a trigger issue in the USA and can be a controversial and to some extent counter-productive framing there.

The other thing I notice is that the American majority in general is also pretty resistant to idea of social justice on socioeconomic grounds anyway, so a switch of emphasis would likely run into similar problems. That is one reason I don't particularly like the appeal to individual solutions generally. Too often it's just a bogus stand-in position for maintaining and shoring up the status quo, one way or the other, where those with advantages get to conveniently keep them. Trumpeting individual rights and principles over group or societal considerations in America therefore has a vaguely hollow, tinny sound to me at times, particularly when it's accompanied by what are essentially complaints about reverse racism, which anyone with a working brain between their ears knows is an overblown issue, aired mostly by non-progessives.

 

[untermensche]

Indeed. I am guessing you purposefully misinterpreted what Loren wrote, but what he wrote is indeed sad. Ties in with the soft bigotry of low expectations, as well as the eggshelll walking effect.

Explain what Loren actually meant?

He is saying minorities are a monolithic grouping that can be thought of as a whole and are somehow inferior but some liberals can't see it or if they see it they ignore all that inferiority of minorities.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I read the article and I am trying to understand how this equates at all to the charge of “dumbing down”. I had been going on discussion here to join the conversation, but clearly that was a mistake. So I’ve read the article now and it says nothing about “dumbing down,” but rather about trading warmth and connection for alpha posturing.

Liberals care about connecting rather than appearing competent.
Liberals find that when dealing with the racial issues current in the US, they care about reaching out and being warm more than they care about appearing assertive and competitive.
This is bad?

"Connecting" = speaking at their level = dumbing down.

"Connecting" means speaking of shared experiences. When talking to a teenager and trying to "connect" you aren't attempting to "dumb down" the conversation, you are trying to let them know you understand how they feel or what they are going through.

Rhea and ronburgandy have two really good posts about this study that have generally been ignored by those that want the alleged outcome of the study to mean what they want it to mean.

 

[untermensche]

Come on now.

We all know that trying to connect with other humans is dumb. Dumb behavior.

Those that do it are racists.

 

[Politesse]

You can address poverty by providing economic opportunity and aid based on income level.

This is, in fact, what all forms of social welfare in the US are currently based on.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

By the way, you asked me to give an example of something that could be done for disadvantaged groups and I suggested outreach. Did you respond to that? I may have missed it. Are you against even that type of affirmative action? If I had to guess, I'd say you are.

If you meant by race proxy, you would be correct. Doing outreach into a poor neighbourhood that happens to have mostly black people is one thing. Doing outreach towards black people, rich or poor, is quite another.

Look, I agree with you that in an ideal world, it would be better if race was irrelevant and every issue was treated on an individual basis, free of that consideration and using only other criteria instead. It's a great idea. In the real world, I'm not convinced that pretending racism not commonplace, or alternatively accepting that it is but that taking positive action to address it, does more harm than good, even allowing for things like the liberal benevolent racism that the OP study may represent.

There is no such thing as positive benevolent racism. It is still racism. It still operates on the basis that I am inferior and encourages that presumption, only it also wishes to help me on that basis, presuming by my brown skin colour that I need that help, or by my eye shape that I don't.

Trumpeting individual rights and principles over group or societal considerations in America therefore has a vaguely hollow, tinny sound to me at times, particularly when it's accompanied by what are essentially complaints about reverse racism, which anyone with a working brain between their ears knows is an overblown issue, aired mostly by non-progessives.

There is no such thing as reverse racism. We need to lose that terminology. Racism is racism. While we are at it, you don't have to be white to be racist. And it is racist to care about one person unfairly discriminated against by race but cheer on another person being discriminated against by race, simply because of which race it is.

 

[ruby sparks]

If you meant by race proxy, you would be correct. Doing outreach into a poor neighbourhood that happens to have mostly black people is one thing. Doing outreach towards black people, rich or poor, is quite another.



There is no such thing as positive benevolent racism. It is still racism. It still operates on the basis that I am inferior and encourages that presumption, only it also wishes to help me on that basis, presuming by my brown skin colour that I need that help, or by my eye shape that I don't.

Trumpeting individual rights and principles over group or societal considerations in America therefore has a vaguely hollow, tinny sound to me at times, particularly when it's accompanied by what are essentially complaints about reverse racism, which anyone with a working brain between their ears knows is an overblown issue, aired mostly by non-progessives.

There is no such thing as reverse racism. We need to lose that terminology. Racism is racism. While we are at it, you don't have to be white to be racist. And it is racist to care about one person unfairly discriminated against by race but cheer on another person being discriminated against by race, simply because of which race it is.

Ok.

Though I still don't know what you mean by saying 'by race proxy'.

And how about those studies on job applications?

I'm being slightly disingenuous. I now know full well what you've been meaning by using the word proxy, partly because I saw your post before you deleted the start of it. You are suggesting, for example, that those studies don't measure racism towards blacks, and that race is in general terms a proxy (stand in) for something else. That's getting you into racism denial, which is a different kettle of stinky fish to your merely advocating race-blind policies, but might help to explain where the latter is actually coming from.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You can address poverty by providing economic opportunity and aid based on income level.

This is, in fact, what all forms of social welfare in the US are currently based on.

Yeah, last time I checked, whites were the majority of welfare recipients. Of course, poor white people are affected by manufacturing leaving the US. Poor black people are welfare kings and queens. And poor latinos are stealing American jobs.

 

[ruby sparks]

You can address poverty by providing economic opportunity and aid based on income level.

This is, in fact, what all forms of social welfare in the US are currently based on.

Yeah, last time I checked, whites were the majority of welfare recipients. Of course, poor white people are affected by manufacturing leaving the US. Poor black people are welfare kings and queens. And poor latinos are stealing American jobs.

The idea is that by using a socioeconomic metric for certain types of 'positive action' (as the lesser variety of 'affirmative action' is called here in the UK) as well as for social welfare, you avoid a number of the pitfalls of using a racial metric and end up (or would end up) mostly or at least disproportionately helping the disadvantaged race groups anyway (though I am not sure how other diversity-promotion policies, such as gender or disability, would fare under a similar alternative metric, or if there even is one available for those).

I think the idea has a lot going for it when it comes to addressing racial issues. Whether Americans would support it or whether it's ever likely to be implemented I don't know. Or maybe there already is the equivalent of positive/affirmative action on socioeconomic grounds in the USA already, regarding for example College courses?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, last time I checked, whites were the majority of welfare recipients. Of course, poor white people are affected by manufacturing leaving the US. Poor black people are welfare kings and queens. And poor latinos are stealing American jobs.

The idea is that by using a socioeconomic metric for certain types of 'positive action' (as the lesser variety of 'affirmative action' is called here in the UK) as well as for social welfare, you avoid a number of the pitfalls of using a racial metric and end up (or would end up) mostly helping the disadvantaged race groups anyway (though I am not sure how other diversity-promotion issues, such as gender or disability, would fare under a similar alternative metric, or if there even is one available for those).

I think the idea has a lot going for it when it comes to addressing racial issues. Whether Americans would support it or whether it's ever likely to be implemented I don't know. Or maybe there already is the equivalent of positive/affirmative action on socioeconomic grounds in the USA already, regarding for example College courses?

There is. Poor people don't go to college and dumb kids of effluent families go to great schools. But this is starting to wander from the BS OP study.

 

[ruby sparks]

Yeah, last time I checked, whites were the majority of welfare recipients. Of course, poor white people are affected by manufacturing leaving the US. Poor black people are welfare kings and queens. And poor latinos are stealing American jobs.

The idea is that by using a socioeconomic metric for certain types of 'positive action' (as the lesser variety of 'affirmative action' is called here in the UK) as well as for social welfare, you avoid a number of the pitfalls of using a racial metric and end up (or would end up) mostly helping the disadvantaged race groups anyway (though I am not sure how other diversity-promotion issues, such as gender or disability, would fare under a similar alternative metric, or if there even is one available for those).

I think the idea has a lot going for it when it comes to addressing racial issues. Whether Americans would support it or whether it's ever likely to be implemented I don't know. Or maybe there already is the equivalent of positive/affirmative action on socioeconomic grounds in the USA already, regarding for example College courses?

There is. Poor people don't go to college and dumb kids of effluent families go to great schools. But this is starting to wander from the BS OP study.

Briefly...there is what? Inequality for poor kids, or the equivalent of positive/affirmative action for poor kids? I was asking about the letter.

Getting back to the OP studies, my take on those would be that no, they do not make a good case for saying that liberals are being unintentionally benevolently racist, or some cousin of that sort of thing, mainly because there is too much scope for ambiguity in the results, but that nevertheless I would be greatly surprised if there was no such phenomenon. So, although I don't think the studies are what necessarily shows it to be true, I accept it that it can be a weakness or failing in at least some cases or types of liberal behaviour. So personally, I don't feel like trying to dodge the general point. As a liberal, I'll take it on the chin as a valid concern about liberals, not excluding myself.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I'm being slightly disingenuous. I now know full well what you've been meaning by using the word proxy, partly because I saw your post before you deleted the start of it. You are suggesting, for example, that those studies don't measure racism towards blacks, and that race is in general terms a proxy (stand in) for something else. That's getting you into racism denial, which is a different kettle of stinky fish to your merely advocating race-blind policies, but might help to explain where the latter is actually coming from.

You saw my 2nd edit (after which I deleted the whole section of my post). My first edit said it may be proxy or it may just simply be simple racism and the people don't want to be around those not like them. You see this not just in white people. Its always struck me how others can get away with it. If I hire only Filipinos, I'm unlikely to get accused of racism. It'll just be seen as me "preserving my culture".

I've read some of your early edits before you changed them sometimes too. We both seem to have that tendency to change posts after we post them. In this case I did it for the sake of brevity. The point I was making was made again later in the post (and in the one I kept standing). Your now accusing me of racism-denial is funny, white man who scored high on that privilege scale.

Racism is itself often based on proxy by the way. One reason people discriminate against people of other races is because they are "the other" and empathy's dark underbelly is "othering"*. But another big reason people discriminate based on race is because they associate particular traits with that race. That's using race proxy. Jews are seen as greedy, blacks as poor and violent, asians as shifty and nerdy, latinos as sex-obsessed, etc. This needs to be discouraged, not encouraged by so-called liberals. Treat people for who they actually are as individuals, instead of as representative members of a group by proxy.

* - Empathy is people seeing themselves in others. Anything making it harder to do that will reduce empathy towards the target. Putting too much focus on race (or any other irrelevant differences) is one way to it.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

You asked how we can address poverty, I answered.

You can address poverty by providing economic opportunity and aid based on income level.

This is, in fact, what all forms of social welfare in the US are currently based on.

Lets keep it that way.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm being slightly disingenuous. I now know full well what you've been meaning by using the word proxy, partly because I saw your post before you deleted the start of it. You are suggesting, for example, that those studies don't measure racism towards blacks, and that race is in general terms a proxy (stand in) for something else. That's getting you into racism denial, which is a different kettle of stinky fish to your merely advocating race-blind policies, but might help to explain where the latter is actually coming from.

You saw my 2nd edit (after which I deleted the whole section of my post). My first edit said it may be proxy or it may just simply be simple racism and the people don't want to be around those not like them. You see this not just in white people. Its always struck me how others can get away with it. If I hire only Filipinos, I'm unlikely to get accused of racism. It'll just be seen as me "preserving my culture".

I've read some of your early edits before you changed them sometimes too. We both seem to have that tendency to change posts after we post them. In this case I did it for the sake of brevity. The point I was making was made again later in the post (and in the one I kept standing). Your now accusing me of racism-denial is funny, white man who scored high on that privilege scale.

Racism is itself often based on proxy by the way. One reason people discriminate against people of other races is because they are "the other" and empathy's dark underbelly is "othering"*. But another big reason people discriminate based on race is because they associate particular traits with that race. That's using race proxy. Jews are seen as greedy, blacks as poor and violent, asians as shifty and nerdy, latinos as sex-obsessed, etc. This needs to be discouraged, not encouraged by so-called liberals. Treat people for who they actually are as individuals, instead of as representative members of a group by proxy.

* - Empathy is people seeing themselves in others. Anything making it harder to do that will reduce empathy towards the target. Putting too much focus on race (or any other irrelevant differences) is one way to it.

Hm. I know what I saw. You were implying that those studies did not measure racism, but only some sort of 'proxy' issue. I think you said something about resumes not containing info on educational achievements, which chimed with what Loren had goofed over too. Did you read the studies and see what was in the resumes? I'm guessing not. I think your caveat was informed by something else, a disinclination, similar to Loren's, to pooh pooh the idea that racism against blacks purely on skin colour was somehow....not happening much or not the 'real' issue.

Your other points are fine, but now I'm just not sure where they are actually coming from.