someproteinguy wrote:
I'm sure it didn't hurt any, but I wouldn't expect to see a large improvement in overall welfare. Again, it's not like people stopped being racist, or acting in a manner that disadvantaged black people, we just made the most overt forms of discrimination illegal.
Well, first off, I think that the combination of making those activities illegal and the pretty massive social campaign to reinforce in the minds of subsequent generations the absolute moral wrongness of racism, did a heck of a lot to stop people being racist. Or maybe the more correct way of putting it isn't that existing racists stopped being so (cause that's pretty unlikely) but that the percentage of racists in each successive generation since then has dropped significantly. Maybe I'm from some rare place in the country where this happened, but I remember growing up that using a racially oriented term, or making a racially oriented joke, garnered the same kind of instantly negative response from everyone in my family and everyone we knew that you might get as a kid for swearing, or getting into a fight, or whatever.
Maybe it's different in the deep south or something, but my admittedly limited experience is that this was a similar experience for most (honestly, I feel like it's "all", but I don't want to talk in absolutes here) of the white people I've met in my life. There was almost a crusade in the 60s and 70s to stamp out that sort of behavior. It was viewed as just plain wrong. Period. No discussion. In fact, one of the more painful realizations in my life was that while white kids like me were being taught that there was no place for racism or racial bias and it was wrong to view or treat people differently based on the color of their skin, a heck of a lot of the black kids I knew in school grew up being taught that white people were the enemy, and were all racist (and even when they insisted they weren't, they really were because they were white and enjoyed the benefits of being white and were thus just deluding themselves while taking advantage of a system that benefited them because of their skin color), and were oppressors, and that they should always keep an eye out for us, and not trust us, etc, etc, etc.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I honestly believe that, at least among the white population of the US, actual racism is pretty darn rare. It's certainly massively less prevalent and massively less likely to create actual statistically significant outcome differences than it was 50 years ago. Call me an optimist on this issue, but I think we've made a ton of progress on this front. But at the same time, it seems like the perception of racism, and the bar for what will be called racism just keeps changing. It really does seem less like rampant racism causing problems, and a lot more like people needing to keep the fear and hatred running so that their social narrative will keep working.
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You still have have plenty of ways to discriminate that aren't technically against the law, or at least are nearly impossible to prove. Those first steps were more akin to treating symptoms than an actual cure.
I disagree. The presence of overt mechanisms in the system served to reinforce the idea that racism and racial bias were acceptable. Their removal, in a pretty spectacular fashion, sent a very strong message in the opposite direction. You form your opinions based on the rules of the world around you. When those rules consistently and strongly say that racism is wrong and discrimination is wrong, it's going to have a massive effect on the opinions of each generation that grows up in that environment. It does a lot more than just treat symptoms. It prevents the ideology from taking root in the first place.
Also, the point about it being nearly impossible to prove is part of my own argument. If you can't prove it, then it becomes something you can never measure, and never know if you're making progress. It also becomes a perfect thing to use as a flash point for generating anger, since it can also never be proved to not exist. You can always point at it and claim it's responsible. Which makes it problematic in this context.
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gbaji wrote:
And when we add in decades of processes that look for signs of the kind of "quiet racism" that you're talking about and either go after those who engage in such things, or create (at least in theory) counter balancing effects, we should have seen an even more dramatic improvement. But we haven't.
What kinds of counter-balancing effects are you referring to?
Decades of affirmative action programs, hiring quotas, school busing, forced desegregation, etc. While I'm not a fan of all those things, they were used and did have an effect on the sociological makeup of the country. They should have had at least some amount of lasting effect, and in conjunction with all the other factors I spoke about, we should be seeing dramatically closer statistical outcomes today. Which leads us to the question of why we aren't.
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I think a 50/50 mix of black/white was what was listed in one of the papers I linked earlier? The closer to that ratio, the more appealing the neighborhood was. The big factor for not wanting to move into a white community was fear. Which brings about the interesting point, is that you can probably find fear down in the roots of a lot of the problems if you dig deep enough, and yes it does come from both sides. So where does that get us? You can't force people out of their comfort zone, you can't make them socialize with other races, you can't make them treat other races equally, so the problem perpetuates. Fear separates people, the lack of contact breeds ignorance, and the ignorance begets harmful actions.
Yeah. Which brings up the point I raised above. Is the fear coming from white people not wanting black people to live in their neighborhoods? Or black people, raised with the anti-white teachings I spoke of, fearing living in a white neighborhood? When you have a group of people within which a largish percentage have been barraged with language telling them that white people can't be trusted, that they'll be profiled, that they'll be treated as criminals, that they'll never be accepted, that they'll be harassed, etc, are we at all surprised when so many of them choose to live within majority black neighborhoods? But how much of that fear is unfounded (I think a very large amount). And how much of that fear actually just serves to perpetuate the divide between us.
Again, I just have a hard time letting go of the perception that 2-3 generations of white kids were taught to ignore race, treat everyone the same, give everyone an equal shot, judge on the content of character and not the color of skin, while the black kids were taught to fear and hate us, but we're supposed to look for white racism as the cause of the problem? And yeah, I see BLM as just another reinforcement of that same terrible message. As long as groups like that keep repeating garbage like that, generations of blacks will continue to grow up innately fearing white people, and will choose not to associate with whites, or make any effort to meet us halfway on this issue. And as long as that happens, the conditions of poverty that afflict black people in this country will continue, and their own perception of "racism" as the cause will continue to be perpetuated. And the cycle will just continue.
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Which, isn't going to get an argument from me. Welfare style programs certainly have their place, but don't really address the type of problem were talking about here. You can give someone food to keep them from starving, but there isn't really anything simple you can hand out to someone to make them successful. The problem becomes more nuanced at that point, and not something you can easily wrap a political slogan around.
Yeah. As I've said before, this is a whole topic in itself. I bring it up only as a counterpoint to what I consider to be at the least a wasted effort by groups following the BLM narrative, and almost certainly a negative result. The problems of racially disparate outcomes are less about actions at this point and more about perceptions. But BLM just reinforces the very perceptions that keeps this problem from being solved. What needs to happen is for people to stop thinking of themselves as a skin color and thinking of themselves as part of a large whole. BLM focuses on the skin color. That's never going to help things IMO. It's only going to make them worse.
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Because people are more biased than you seem to think. They'll overwhelmingly prefer to interact with members of their own race, and will feel uncomfortable if they're repeatedly forced outside of that bubble. Forcing people into an uncomfortable situation is bad for your business.
You mean "human"? Why do we even think of people with different skin color as being of a different race? Do you see how perpetuation of the language itself can be a large part of the problem here? You can never fix that as long as we have an entire "side" of our political landscape more or less banking on racial division. You want to solve the issue of racial bias? Stop talking about race. Don't mention someone's skin color. Stop collecting stats about people by race. Stop asking them to fill it out on a form. Stop tailoring services to them based on race. Stop tailoring messages based on race. Stop pandering to race in politics.
Imagine a generation of kids who've never heard the word "race" used in the context of skin color. Imagine them never hearing skin color used in any way as a means of separating people, or judging people, or measuring success, or dividing people. They would have no reason to think that someone with a different skin color is in any way different (except for skin color). It would be like hair or eye color. Mentioned as part of a description, but somewhat ludicrous to suggest as being a factor that would or should result in any kind of mass discrimination.
Can you imagine that? I know this sounds silly, but it could literally be that simple. You can't fix what people believe today, but you can certainly influence the beliefs of future generations. What BLM is doing is going in the wrong direction on this IMO.
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Hmmm, I don't think either of those definitions are what we're looking for as a root of a problem here. Don't know what you want to call it but something closer to: an action that has an unequal effect of the welfare of members of different races.
But if the action itself isn't targeted at race, then it should not be a problem. It's only a problem because we choose to measure race in the context of something that shouldn't have anything to do with it. If police stops occur at a higher rate in a poor high crime neighborhood then what impact that has by race should be irrelevant. It's a result of the crime rate, not the skin color of those living there. It only appears to be if you choose to look at people and measure them based on their skin color. Why should people's skin color even be a factor we use here?
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We can talk about indirect or direct effects, fear, ignorance and other things along those lines to expand on the problem. But in general people consistently acting in a way that disadvantages, or at least doesn't equally benefit, members of another race can perpetuate disparity even without malice intentions.
Ok. But does the message of BLM increase or decrease that fear and ignorance? I think it increases it. Which is why it's not helpful. They're just adding to the problem.
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Get past that and then you're at the point where you have to ask yourself whether equal opportunity is enough, or whether equal prosperity is the goal. Which, ugh, is a whole different can of worms...
Yeah. A big can of worms. As my "give a man a fish and he'll never learn to fish for himself" example shows, the very attempt to equalize prosperity will most likely result in less equal base conditions over time, in the exact opposite direction you wanted to go. It's why I mentioned that efforts to counter balance things only work "in theory". It's a theory I happen to believe is 100% wrong. You can't give people actual prosperity. They have to earn it. But when you teach people that prosperity can be given to them, if only those who currently have it weren't cruel and withholding it from them, you aren't helping them. You're just giving them one more reason not to expend the effort required to earn it for themselves.
Let me just leave this here. Tell me what you think of it, and whether you think it's helpful or hurtful for the purpose of ending racism:
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Statement of Principles
1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the White Community
3. Commitment to the White Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the White Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of "Middleclassness"
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the White Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting White Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all White leadership who espouse and embrace the White Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the White Value System.
I'll give you one guess where this came from.