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"Institutional racism,"(has it undergone re-branding as "institutionalized discrimination"?) is this vague, boogey-man term used as an explanation of last reso

by cb18 10y ago

"Institutional racism,"(has it undergone re-branding as "institutionalized discrimination"?) is this vague, boogey-man term used as an explanation of last resort to explain the "achievement gap," among other divergences between the races. The thing is, there is tenuous evidence at best for "institutional racism," and in nowhere near the quantity that would be needed to account for all of its supposed effects. Indeed to the contrary we've had decades of policies seeking parity between between certain segments of society on various measures, and yet the gaps remain virtually unchanged. There are other exceedingly more plausible explanations for the "achievement gap" and the other divergences. But people in certain segments of polite society have a nasty habit of trying to ruin the lives of anyone who so much as mutters these other explanations. For the "institutional racism" proponents... Has anyone attempted to explain why all this "institutional racism" seems to be working to such great benefit for north-east Asians in the US, who consistently rank above the supposed "evil white oppressors" in various socio-economic metrics? Or why we see common patterns of achievement and behavior between races across societies with wildly different institutional histories?

PlainsWight 10y ago
Please enlighten the rest of us with what the more plausible explanations are.
braythwayt 10y ago
"Institutional racism,” also “Systemic racism,” is not a vague, bogeyman term, it has a specific and objective meaning. It can be measured and has been measured, repeatedly. In almost every area of American life, there are measurable effects. Blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites for the same crimes. They are more likely to be sent to prison and to get longer prison sentences given the same criminal records and the same circumstances. As is often quoted, resumes with black-sounding names get far fewer calls for interviews than resumes with white-sounding names. These are facts, and on Hacker News we prize facts. As it is so often put when talking about things like creationism, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” --- What I am finding more and more is a certain type of rhetoric, I will call it “Racism Denial.” It works just like Creationism Denial and Climate Change Denial. The denialist does not approach these discussions with any good faith attempt to discuss the issues or to weigh the factors on display. The denialist has an agenda, and the agenda is to derail progress, to disrupt any and all attempts to fix what ails the system. This is because the denialist fears that change will hurt them personally. The creationist denies evolution, because accepting evolution means turning away from the creationist God, which means letting go of the religious fervour that they have adopted as a core part of their identity. The climate change denier denies climate change because accepting climate change means another step towards ending certain industries and jobs. They fear the loss of their income, the dissolution and decay of their coal mining town, the loss of jobs making gasoline-powered cars and a transfer of economic wealth to places like California where they make clean electric cars. So let me ask you: What do you personally fear from people nodding and saying “Yes, there is systemic racism in America?” What do you think you will lose? What bad things will happen to you and to America if people stop pretending there is a problem and stop blaming blacks for everything that happens to them? Why are you trying so hard to pretend there’s nothing going on?
- wpietri 10y ago
  > What I am finding more and more is a certain type of rhetoric, I will call it “Racism Denial.” That's an excellent name for it. What I find especially frustrating about it is how it's dressed up in a search for objective truth. However, the only kind of evidence they want is the kind that proves racism. They never appear to search for evidence for the opposite proposition, that racism does not exist. That's always their given, their ground, their unquestioned assumption. In the broader historical context, that's ridiculous. The US's history is enormously racist. We fought an entire civil war over whether black people were actually people. The racism denialists are in effect claiming that on some unspecified date in history, all of that racism evaporated and left no trace in heart, mind, or law. That's the proposition I think we should be demanding evidence for.
  - cb18 10y ago
    The US's history is enormously racist. We fought an entire civil war over whether black people were actually people. The racism denialists are in effect claiming that on some unspecified date in history, all of that racism evaporated and left no trace in heart, mind, or law. That's the proposition I think we should be demanding evidence for. What explains the similarity in crime rates, test scores, achievement, SES, between Africans in the US, England, and Sweden? 2 of the 3 having no history of enslaving Africans.
    - wpietri 10y ago
      Yes, that's exactly the sort of racism-denialist burden-shifting that I am talking about. Thank you for demonstrating it so neatly.
- cb18 10y ago
  You're taking observations(one of them isn't even a factual observation[0]) and then a priori assigning a cause, "systemic racism," to those observations. That is not how facts, or rational, coherent reasoning works. [0] Races aren't arrested at different rates for the same crimes, race percentage in victim reports match race percentage in arrests. Drug arrest rate appear to vary as the result of compound charges, i.e. while being arrested for another crime, blacks happen to have drugs on them. Because blacks commit some crimes at a much higher rate than whites the drug numbers look biased without this context. --- Reread the questions and arguments I posed, then if you want to respond to them, ok, but otherwise don't waste my time.
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
>Has anyone attempted to explain why all this "institutional racism" seems to be working to such great benefit for north-east Asians in the US, who consistently rank above the supposed "evil white oppressors" in various socio-economic metrics? Since others are picking apart your argument in the large, I'll just add this. Institutional racism, though it continues to manifest in the present, can only be fully understood through history: the extremely racist practices and policies of past generations of Americans have had compounding effects through time on the populations subjected to them. Regarding Asian American immigrants, the vast majority of them have only arrived since the 1960s[0], so they've had much less time to be dragged down by systemic racism. And additionally, the fact that they are lighter of skin tone tends to make them a less targeted group by racist actors. >Or why we see common patterns of achievement and behavior between races across societies with wildly different institutional histories? Who is 'we' and what exactly do 'we see'??? I'm dying to know. [0]http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asian-immigrants-united-states http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asian-immigrants-unit...
- cb18 10y ago
  Since others are picking apart your argument in the large Ha! No one else has even evidenced reading the post, I applaud you for seeming to have at least read it. so they've had much less time to be dragged down by systemic racism. They're not being "dragged down" at all, they're being "pushed up." There is no reason to think that given enough time they will eventually be dragged down. There is not some race in the US conspiring to keep other races down given enough time. I'd imagine any race accussed of such a thing would find it highly offensive. Far be it from me to make the accusation, but there is precedent to say that Asians and Jews are oppressing everyone else in the US because of their greater average income, and because they hold "high prestige" positions in proportionally greater numbers. There is no evidence for societal wide mechanisms keeping particular races down. People looks at measurements, see differences, then try to blame the measuring stick, i.e. society for the differences. the fact that they are lighter of skin tone tends to make them a less targeted group by racist actors. That doesn't even sound like the way people like to imagine "institutional racism." I thought the whole point was that there is no conscious targetting and not anyone particular actor but society as a whole in some fuzzy, unspecified way is to blame. Who is 'we' and what exactly do 'we see'??? I'm dying to know. I don't get this tone here. We is anyone who looks, what we see is similarity in crime rates, test scores, achievement, SES, income, etc. anything people in the US try to ascribe to "institutional racism." Yet we see similar metrics and behavior in countries with different institutional histories, and in the countries where these US minorities originate.

by cb18 10y ago

PlainsWight 10y ago

Please enlighten the rest of us with what the more plausible explanations are.

braythwayt 10y ago

"Institutional racism,” also “Systemic racism,” is not a vague, bogeyman term, it has a specific and objective meaning. It can be measured and has been measured, repeatedly. In almost every area of American life, there are measurable effects. Blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites for the same crimes. They are more likely to be sent to prison and to get longer prison sentences given the same criminal records and the same circumstances. As is often quoted, resumes with black-sounding names get far fewer calls for interviews than resumes with white-sounding names. These are facts, and on Hacker News we prize facts. As it is so often put when talking about things like creationism, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” --- What I am finding more and more is a certain type of rhetoric, I will call it “Racism Denial.” It works just like Creationism Denial and Climate Change Denial. The denialist does not approach these discussions with any good faith attempt to discuss the issues or to weigh the factors on display. The denialist has an agenda, and the agenda is to derail progress, to disrupt any and all attempts to fix what ails the system. This is because the denialist fears that change will hurt them personally. The creationist denies evolution, because accepting evolution means turning away from the creationist God, which means letting go of the religious fervour that they have adopted as a core part of their identity. The climate change denier denies climate change because accepting climate change means another step towards ending certain industries and jobs. They fear the loss of their income, the dissolution and decay of their coal mining town, the loss of jobs making gasoline-powered cars and a transfer of economic wealth to places like California where they make clean electric cars. So let me ask you: What do you personally fear from people nodding and saying “Yes, there is systemic racism in America?” What do you think you will lose? What bad things will happen to you and to America if people stop pretending there is a problem and stop blaming blacks for everything that happens to them? Why are you trying so hard to pretend there’s nothing going on?

wpietri 10y ago
> What I am finding more and more is a certain type of rhetoric, I will call it “Racism Denial.” That's an excellent name for it. What I find especially frustrating about it is how it's dressed up in a search for objective truth. However, the only kind of evidence they want is the kind that proves racism. They never appear to search for evidence for the opposite proposition, that racism does not exist. That's always their given, their ground, their unquestioned assumption. In the broader historical context, that's ridiculous. The US's history is enormously racist. We fought an entire civil war over whether black people were actually people. The racism denialists are in effect claiming that on some unspecified date in history, all of that racism evaporated and left no trace in heart, mind, or law. That's the proposition I think we should be demanding evidence for.
- cb18 10y ago
  The US's history is enormously racist. We fought an entire civil war over whether black people were actually people. The racism denialists are in effect claiming that on some unspecified date in history, all of that racism evaporated and left no trace in heart, mind, or law. That's the proposition I think we should be demanding evidence for. What explains the similarity in crime rates, test scores, achievement, SES, between Africans in the US, England, and Sweden? 2 of the 3 having no history of enslaving Africans.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Yes, that's exactly the sort of racism-denialist burden-shifting that I am talking about. Thank you for demonstrating it so neatly.
cb18 10y ago
You're taking observations(one of them isn't even a factual observation[0]) and then a priori assigning a cause, "systemic racism," to those observations. That is not how facts, or rational, coherent reasoning works. [0] Races aren't arrested at different rates for the same crimes, race percentage in victim reports match race percentage in arrests. Drug arrest rate appear to vary as the result of compound charges, i.e. while being arrested for another crime, blacks happen to have drugs on them. Because blacks commit some crimes at a much higher rate than whites the drug numbers look biased without this context. --- Reread the questions and arguments I posed, then if you want to respond to them, ok, but otherwise don't waste my time.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago

>Has anyone attempted to explain why all this "institutional racism" seems to be working to such great benefit for north-east Asians in the US, who consistently rank above the supposed "evil white oppressors" in various socio-economic metrics? Since others are picking apart your argument in the large, I'll just add this. Institutional racism, though it continues to manifest in the present, can only be fully understood through history: the extremely racist practices and policies of past generations of Americans have had compounding effects through time on the populations subjected to them. Regarding Asian American immigrants, the vast majority of them have only arrived since the 1960s[0], so they've had much less time to be dragged down by systemic racism. And additionally, the fact that they are lighter of skin tone tends to make them a less targeted group by racist actors. >Or why we see common patterns of achievement and behavior between races across societies with wildly different institutional histories? Who is 'we' and what exactly do 'we see'??? I'm dying to know. [0]http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asian-immigrants-united-states http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asian-immigrants-unit...

cb18 10y ago
Since others are picking apart your argument in the large Ha! No one else has even evidenced reading the post, I applaud you for seeming to have at least read it. so they've had much less time to be dragged down by systemic racism. They're not being "dragged down" at all, they're being "pushed up." There is no reason to think that given enough time they will eventually be dragged down. There is not some race in the US conspiring to keep other races down given enough time. I'd imagine any race accussed of such a thing would find it highly offensive. Far be it from me to make the accusation, but there is precedent to say that Asians and Jews are oppressing everyone else in the US because of their greater average income, and because they hold "high prestige" positions in proportionally greater numbers. There is no evidence for societal wide mechanisms keeping particular races down. People looks at measurements, see differences, then try to blame the measuring stick, i.e. society for the differences. the fact that they are lighter of skin tone tends to make them a less targeted group by racist actors. That doesn't even sound like the way people like to imagine "institutional racism." I thought the whole point was that there is no conscious targetting and not anyone particular actor but society as a whole in some fuzzy, unspecified way is to blame. Who is 'we' and what exactly do 'we see'??? I'm dying to know. I don't get this tone here. We is anyone who looks, what we see is similarity in crime rates, test scores, achievement, SES, income, etc. anything people in the US try to ascribe to "institutional racism." Yet we see similar metrics and behavior in countries with different institutional histories, and in the countries where these US minorities originate.