that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl'

right, and i would assume that's mostly due to the fact that it's much easier for someone from the lower classes to maybe borrow a suit and a nice pair of shoes for a job interview than it is for a minority to, you know, dye their skin and change their name.

well i was mostly thinking of college admissions, and race-conscious school desegregation, stuff that's not so much down to individual decision-makers but more systemic. but there is that too.

now playing:

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2008/4/4/albumcoverMoseAllison-MiddleClassWhiteBoy.jpg

Also, I distinguish between the agency of artists and business people and the agency of youth, particularly underage youth (but age is arbitrary). Like, youth ARE impressionable, right? Even if they can distinguish between fiction and reality? And it's not like 9th & 10th grade gangbangers in rough Chicago neighborhoods are listening to much besides rap & r&b that depicts blacks in ways that match up with the ugliest ways that whites stereotype them.

"reducing popular black culture to the pressure caused by oppression is one of the more problematic but basic assumptions of history that ppl have been rejecting for decades now. cf AGENCY"

That's almost like saying, "Well, black people prefer it that way."

if you use class instead of race to do affirmative action and stuff it won't work that good and racial inequality will get worse

This is a very interesting assertion, assuming it is broadly true. But then, it would require asking a hell of a lot of questions about the proper goals of affirmative action, if poor people getting better jobs, a better education and better lives could be defined as a failure of those goals.

Additionally, if helping all poor people equally created even more "racial inequality", it might possibly shed some light on why poor "white" people feel aggrieved by affirmative action that is solely racially-based.

If you just want to compensate "black" people for the multi-generational crime of slavery followed by a century of legalized oppression and the havoc that wrought, then maybe we should be talking about reparations instead. Me, I'd rather move in the direction of socialism and let social justice do the work of promoting racial justice.

maybe you just meant that all discrimination is equally unfair?

Not what I had in mind.

By binding false racial categories to the definition of the problem, so far from reducing racism, you perpetuate those categories and solidify them. Redefining the problem as a set of measurable harms which must be addressed by society and, to the extent possible, reversing them, allows you to decouple the solution from the crap that caused the problem, while still letting you focus on delivering a solution.

I guess what I am talking about is pretty radical compared to affirmative action. Not really gonna happen. But affirmative action based on race plants seeds of racism even as it seeks to destroy them.

well you said poverty and *not* race. should be both. also in a lot of cases it's not solely racially based, for example i went to a school where white males from appalachia were a big beneficiary of affirmative action. i wish that were advertised more.

But affirmative action based on race plants seeds of racism even as it seeks to destroy them.

please, please tell us how it does this so this thread can become that much more amazing!

i'll take that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl' over that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'the concept of race,' every time

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

wonder if martin luther king jr's dreams were planting secret racist dream seeds that were undermining his dreams as he dreamt them

seriously, you have to trust me on this one. this song is awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeq6dAvBSCI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY_GM7KLvk8

see, now that just looks scary. i'm afraid to click on it. crack the sky were not scary! they were geniuseses.

i'll take that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl' over that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'the concept of race

Please do tell us about the legitimacy and usefulness of the concept of race. Feel free to elaborate as much as you like. Use the words "half-breed", "quadroon" and "octaroon" wherever you feel it is necessary to make fine racial distinctions.

I ended up voting for "cool"

Please do tell us about the legitimacy and usefulness of the concept of race.

can't help disadvantaged races without first defining what a disadvantaged race is, bro. in america those are basically defined as any and all non-european race, now sit down

a-yo I'm not that disadvantaged tbh

can't help disadvantaged races without first defining what a disadvantaged race is, bro

I see what you mean. So, what would be this definition?

I mean, how can I tell when is someone non-european? Like, my niece, f'rinstance. She has a rather, er, mixed heritage in that regard.

dyao, i wouldn't be all that disadvantaged in europe (provided i spoke european)

aimless you're presupposing that people are rational about their discrimination. in the real world it doesn't work that way, it's a snap judgment. furthermore post pics of your niece please so we can all judge

??? I was speakig about growing up in america

I'm amused ppl think 'white-on-white' humor is a development of the last decade.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089277/

anyway I think this thread is kinda funny because the original fist bump thread was not started by a white person iirc. regardless continue with your incisive observations everybody

― dyªº (dyao), Saturday, April 24, 2010 11:18 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i am white btw

aimless you're presupposing that people are rational about their discrimination. in the real world it doesn't work that way, it's a snap judgment.

I rather well aware of this. But you are now proposing that the government keep stats and set policy based on something that cannot be rationally defined and is based entirely on snap judgements "in the real world".

Me, I can't imagine how to write such a policy so it doesn't get totally screwed up when it is transferred to "the real world". I am not proposing that the inequalities that arose in that real world, based on those irrational judgements, be ignored or allowed to continue to fester.

I am just looking for a way not to codify a set of irrationalities as the institutional basis for addressing the harm done of those inequalities. Which, it seems to me, could be done by addressing the policy to the harm (which is real) rather than to the racial categories (which are wholly irrational and impossible to make sense out of). If this means including some "white" people who have become enmeshed in similar kinds of harm, then I don't see that as an objection.

dyao, i was kiddin - obviously though all non-european races aren't discriminated against equally, some have it better than others, this is not a challop

aimless i just don't understand where you're going with your whole "shucks, why even bring up race in the first place" thing, as if people willingly pursue racial issues, as if consideration of race isn't a consequence of a heterogeneous human population. i don't have a problem with institutionalizing a correction for irrational harm, if you have an actual idea for how to address the problem that doesn't involve simply reverting to the status quo, i'd be interested to hear it! again, how exactly does affirmative action plant "seeds of racism?"

(willingly pursue, as opposed to having the issues pursue them)

until such time as all citizens are required to undergo a DNA evaluation that assigns them a ranking based on cross-referencing their specific genome and a spectral analysis of their skin color with a real-time discrimination database, checking boxes census style and respecting people's statements of self-identification will have to do

okay so let's pretend that we have an imaginary society with 100 people who self-identify as race A and 500 who self-identify as race B (where A and B are taken to be not essentialist biological categories, but historically contiguous cultural communities offering identities which people may (or may not) feel accurately represent them and their experiences)

say we divided this population into 5 classes, in order to study the demographic makeups, and we got these results (arranged from wealthiest to least):

1st - 5 A, 115 B
2nd - 10 A, 110 B
3rd - 15 A, 105 B
4th - 40 A, 80 B
5th - 30 A, 90 B

so, on the one hand, there seems to be a fairly clear discrepancy in the distribution of the two races across the class spectrum, with race A greatly overrepresented in the bottom 40% and and greatly underrepresented everywhere else. but does this mean that we can ignore race altogether, dissolving it into "socioeconomic status" and using the latter as the sole criterion for public policy (affirmative action, etc.)? if we just focus on helping "the lower classes", does this automatically mean that, because race A is overrepresented among said classes, we are working to remedy the systematic factors, the imbalances, that contribute to that overrepresentation? (if we can even agree that such imbalances exist...)

in this context, I would argue that "race" becomes a useful concept only when seen -- along with its necessary corollary, "racism" -- as a historical determinant of the present state of society. the line that leads from slavery through sharecropping and Jim Crow up to the modern 'workfare' system and the War on Non-Violent Drug Offenses is not a difficult one to trace. which is not to say that tracing the line answers any questions; but neither does erasing it right any wrongs.

(the above post was mainly prompted by aimless's objections to race-based affirmative-action, btw)

if we just focus on helping "the lower classes", does this automatically mean that, because race A is overrepresented among said classes, we are working to remedy the systematic factors, the imbalances, that contribute to that overrepresentation?

If the point of the exercise is to create a normative statistical distribution, then clearly you cannot ignore the criterion that the statistical distribution measures. That would be futile.

If the point of the exercise is to create a healthier society, then your first step is to outlaw the continuation of active discrimination based on group identity, and to enforce this. After that, I think you may safely place your efforts into assuring that everyone in every quintile has the chance for a good education, good health care, and enough to eat. If that is accomplished, I think you'll find that the perception of a deep-rooted social problem that perpetuates old injustices will go away.

wow, so if society can consciously re-engineer our perception of the problem, unconscious discrimination on an individual level will magically vanish in turn?

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

--justice roberts ; )

holy smokes aimless is your real-life identity that of supreme court chief justice john g. roberts??? you are like my dad's favorite supreme court justice of all-time, it is truly an honor to argue with you about whether or not affirmative action is inherently racist

the connection btween 'race is a biological myth' & 'we should pretend race simply doesnt exist so as to get rid of inequality' -- how do ppl make it?

im color blind

i literally dont know what race my girlfriend is--she could be black, white, purple, i have no idea--or my parents--i look in the mirror--am i chinese? am i from venezuela? who knows.

u r the mayor of chinatown bro

i just call it 'town'

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

max your bit isn't that fresh when stephen colbert's been doing it every night for the last 4 years

ouch

guess ill ask a mod to delete those 3 posts

tbf, roberts' bit is even less fresh

he doesnt really do "fresh"

max's mind not working in an original fashion since he put that Mets ski cap on.

feel justified by these totally conclusive poll results

you are like my dad's favorite supreme court justice of all-time

Please point me to the speech(es) where our esteemed chief justice advocates a single-payer universal health care system, a system of assured basic income for all US citizens, and public education with guaranteed class sizes of 20 or fewer and extra tutorial assistance for all who need it, as a method for erasing class inequalities, and I will gladly accept the great similarity between us.

please explain how affirmative action plants seeds of racism

mjpopcorn.gif

Regardless of how good you are at what you're doing, certain people will say you only got the job due to affirmative action with the assumption that you are taking the place of a m ore qualified white person in order to fulfill a quota.

This is why I was against affirmative action for many years; I didn't want bigots to think that I wan't actually that much better than them. Later on, I realized that affirmative action gave me an even better opportunity to make bigots crazy since I could take opportunities that, in their minds, I wasn't qualified for, then be way fucking better than them at it.