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This is increasingly my concern-- There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men. You can d
This is increasingly my concern-- There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men. You can drag a white guy for pretty much any societal ill you like on the internet these days, and while there are some pretty great points to be made with respect to blaming a lot of modern society's problems on its principal architects (old white dudes), this is no way to win hearts and minds.
We're currently suffering through four years of self-imposed punishment as a result of being a bunch of judgmental assholes in pursuit of a goal that any reasonable human would accept as self-evident-- that people deserve to be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, et cetera. That the American Dream is available equally to all Americans.
I spend a lot of time offering feedback to people in a professional capacity and I am frankly shocked at the level of discourse I see on the internet from progressives. If I pulled this kind of shit at work I'd be finished, because I don't see any way I could possibly be effective communicating an idea to anybody in this fashion.
Almost as if the media doesn't really give a shit about justice or equality, but rather generating rage-clicks and internet lynch mobs to move advertising inventory. :-\
>> We're currently suffering through four years of self-imposed punishment as a result of being a bunch of judgmental assholes in pursuit of a goal that any reasonable human would accept as self-evident-- that people deserve to be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, et cetera.
If leftists/liberals wanted everyone to be treated fairly without prejudice of their race or sex then they would not continually push for the expansion and entrenchment of race and sex based affirmative action programs which deliberately exclude people from employment opportunities, scholarships, networking opportunities and many other essential resources.
The goals and the means are contradictory. If you abandon the goal of equality of opportunity as the left has for the more dubious goal of equality of outcomes then your create a system that treats people unequally based on there race and sex. And furthermore, a system that artificially transfers burdens and hardships onto select races while giving others races 'privileges' and opportunity.
No 'reasonable human' will ever accept exclusion from employment because of there race or sex. And that is exactly what is happening to many qualified and ambitious people at this point. The pool of disaffected people is only going to grow until these polices are changed to reflect a meritocratic model based on objective qualifications.
I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground. This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.
And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quot...
>> I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground.
Equality of outcomes enforced by excluding certain racial groups creates intergenerational systemic government oppression of the excluded groups. Again the goal and the means are contradictory.
The socially acceptable way to increase participation by a perceived underrepresented group is to target that group with sustained improvement programs with measurable outcomes. This is the only serious way to address the problem. The opportunities are there but talent with proper skills is not.
>> This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.
The burden of proof is on the accuser to prove that 'society' is in fact guilty of 'systemic racism'. The presumption of Innocence until proven guilty is a cornerstone of western law. Whey you have an indictment of 'society' in a court of law then we can have a fruitful discussion of 'societal systemic racism'.
>> And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".
Once again your presenting a contradiction. You want to argue that 'systemic racism', for instance against blacks is a horrible injustice. But also claim that other racial groups such as whites are being excluded because there is a racially discriminatory quota system, but you have no problem with that.
So what I gather from your post is that you support racism as long as its against Whites and Asians.
And you also think that its perfectly fine to remove 'less-competent' people as long as they are White or Asian and replace then with presumably even 'less-competent' black people?
> There really seems to be a prevailing opinion that racism and sexism are just fine when directed towards white men.
White men benefit immensely from our position of privilege. The notion that "racism" and "sexism" against white men exists in our society (the US) is just completely out of alignment with the facts as they are.
Your statement is roughly analogous to someone opining that restraining a prison guard from beating inmates is tantamount to imprisoning the guard.
This isn't to say that white men aren't victims of discrimination (race or gender-based), but only that this sort of victimization is highly context-dependent and not at all systemic. It's not on the same level as "racism" and "sexism" as it applies in this context, as these two things require a significant power imbalance. White men have no shortage of advantage on the balance of power.
You're using the relatively recent redefinition of the term "racism", that claims that racism is only systemic prejudice from a position of power (the so-called prejudice+power definition).
With this definition, yes, it is impossible to be racist to white males in US.
The problem is that this definition is not what the word actually means in colloquial English. So when most people talk about racism, they have that conventional definition in mind, not the stuff that social studies use these days.
And frankly, this attempt to rewrite the dictionary doesn't seem to have any reasonable justifications. We already had various terms and combinations of terms that describe the nuances fairly well - we had "racism" to mean "racial prejudice", and we had "systemic racism" to mean prejudice+power.
The only reason why I can see to change these around, to, effectively, replace "racism" with "racial prejudice", and "systemic racism" with just "racism", is because "racism" became a word with extremely heavy negative connotations. And some the same people who campaigned for it to become that - and rightly so, IMO - became uncomfortable with the fact that those negative connotations now also applied to some members of minority groups (e.g. the New Black Panthers). With the new definitions, this problem disappears - NBP is "prejudiced", but they're not "racist" anymore.
And this is very problematic, because the result of that is that bona fide hate speech - like, literal explicit calls for murdering people based on their race - is treated as more acceptable than e.g. pay disparity.
> If leftists/liberals wanted everyone to be treated fairly without prejudice of their race or sex
Which they do.
> then they would not continually push for the expansion and entrenchment of race and sex based affirmative action programs
They would continually push for the recalibration of them, which may include expansion in some areas.
> which deliberately exclude people from employment opportunities, scholarships, networking opportunities and many other essential resources.
That is the opposite of what AA programs do; AA programs address pre-existing structural exclusion.
> If you abandon the goal of equality of opportunity as the left has for the more dubious goal of equality of outcomes
Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are not opposed goals, and the left hasn't abandoned the former for the latter. The left, OTOH, recognized that the absence of the latter causes the absence of the former (outcomes at t0 define opportunities at t1; one of the most important parts of outcomes are the opportunities that they create) and so in the absence of equality of outcomes, corrective measures are necessary to create equality of opportunity, and those measures are in many cases going to involve moving toward equality of outcomes, both in direct nature and indirect effect.
> Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are not opposed goals, and the left hasn't abandoned the former for the latter.
They may not be opposed goals but if a method includes the exclusion of certain racial and sex groups then you can not call the method an equality of opportunity. You are simply trying to gift success to a preferential and privileged race or sex. That is the method the American liberal left has chosen. And it is racist and sexist methodology.
> The left, OTOH, recognized that the absence of the latter causes the absence of the former (outcomes at t0 define opportunities at t1; one of the most important parts of outcomes are the opportunities that they create) and so in the absence of equality of outcomes, corrective measures are necessary to create equality of opportunity, and those measures are in many cases going to involve moving toward equality of outcomes, both in direct nature and indirect effect.
Equality of opportunity will never, and can never guarantee an equality of outcome.
In most cases including employment and other competitive activities there will always be losers. When two tennis players play a game there will be one winner and one loser. When there is a management spot open in a company there will only be one winner and multiple losers. When 1000 applicants apply for a single job opening there will be one winner that gets the job and 999 people who lose.
What the Liberal Left has embraced by promoting equality of outcomes is the removal of equality of opportunity in its entirety for anyone they have preemptively decided should be the looser. There can be no competition in the first place and there is no opportunity. Winners are simply anointed by a committee of divinely anointed deciders.
If 1000 people apply for a job and 999 of them are White and Asian men and one is Black woman and the anointed deciders decide that a Black woman should get the job, which is what race based quotas do, those 999 white and Asian men had no equality of opportunity period.
If this is the sort of game that the Liberal left thinks they are going to play with hundreds of millions of people's lives, and they think they cap pick and choose who's hopes and dreams come true, and they can exclude hundred of thousand on a whim to meet an arbitraty and ever changing percentage of racialy balanced winners, good luck. The small window of accaptence of these sort of ideas are closing with the Baby Boomers. The vast majority of people under under 60 do not sees these type of policies as fair or good. And they have every right to reject them. These are massive iniquality that the left thinks they are entitled to try and engineer into a very fragile and tenuous democracy.
In conclusion promoting the equality of outcomes is erasing the possibility of equality of opportunity. And in the specific case of hiring decisions using race as a criteria for deciding who wins the job it's simply an act of blatent discrimination by the specific employer and the management who made the decisions.
> They may not be opposed goals but if a method includes the exclusion of certain racial and sex groups then you can not call the method an equality of opportunity.
Actual affirmative action programs do not include the exclusion of racial or gender groups, so your comment is a non-sequitur regardless of its validity in isolation.
> Equality of opportunity will never, and can never guarantee an equality of outcome.
Which is why its likely affirmative action will always be necessary, though the calibration will need to change over time, because while a cohort having equality of opportunity between subcohorts does not, as you accurately describe, produce equality of outcome, inequality of outcome within the cohort does guarantee inequality of opportunity in the successor cohort.
However, we're nowhere near that sort of nearest-approximation-of-ideal situation where the inequality of opportunity we are concerned with leveling is merely the result of the result of the inevitable inequality of outcome in a prior cohort with equalized opportunity; we still see historically disadvantaged groups (by race/ethnicity, but also gender, gender identity, sexuality, and other axes) continuing to be disadvantaged not only by durable effects of past de jure and de facto discrimination, but also in many cases by overt and covert current discrimination.
> The vast majority of people under under 60 do not sees these type of policies as fair or good
Every poll I've ever seen breaking out support for affirmative action policies by age groups, and I've seen a lot over the from the early 1990s through the last couple of years, has consistently found support higher among younger Americans. (And also shown overwhelming majority support for Affirmative Action generally, though only minority support for the kind of strict mechanical preference measures which have generally been eliminated many decades ago everywhere except college admissions.)
> Which is why its likely affirmative action will always be necessary.
Affirmative action programs like most progressive ideology and policy has simply not produced any tangible lasting results. In most respects the focus groups of these programs are in worse shape now then they were 30 years ago. The presumption that 'racism', 'sexism' or 'oppression' is responsible for the failure of certain groups is simply unfounded blame shifting by sloppy ideologues. And the notion that gifting them undeserved employment opportunities is going to fix there problems is also a misguided and harmful idea.
The premise is simply wrong and will continue to fail at its stated goal but have the consequence of creating new groups of disadvantaged people who have been systemically discriminated against for having an undesirable skin color or genitalia according to the Liberal Lefts preferred fetishes.
Either out of social opposition or economic necessity these programs will be ended. The most egregious of policies such as race based admission quotas that certain universities use is already under sustained lawsuits and there is every indication that they will be forced to stop there racist and misandrist discrimination against European and Asian men.
> Every poll I've ever seen breaking out support for affirmative action policies by age groups, and I've seen a lot over the from the early 1990s through the last couple of years, has consistently found support higher among younger Americans.
The Baby Boomers cling to these ideas out of stubborn habit but people under 60 when asked if they think certain racial groups should get preferential access to job opportunities strongly disagree. That's not to say certain groups think they themselves should get preferential access to jobs for xyz reasons. Disparate groups claiming they deserve affirmative action for a cornucopia of mostly undefinable grievances like 'oppression' and 'reparations' is not going to sustain these misguided programs in the current century.
It's a shame that people cling to these misguided failed ideas. There is a lot of good work people could do trying to fix the broken communities that have problems. But I suppose that would be a lot of work and perhaps not as economically rewarding as keeping a failed and bloated bureaucratic failure on its feat at least until they can retire.
The whole "power imbalance" definition is a tremendous wedge to divide and conquer groups that would ordinarily be on the same side of an issue of basic human decency. "I can say what I like and it's not racist because I am [fill in the blank]."
To say nothing of the muddiness of a 'power imbalance'. I have been the only white kid on my block, and I got my ass kicked more than a few times because of it. Was there a power imbalance on the block? Sure. Was there a power imbalance in the school or court system the other way? Absolutely. Who's the victim this time? Where does the dividing line between them being racist and me being racist lie?
The stop sign? The school boundary?
Lot of those dudes, we became friends after knocking the hell out of each other for no reason, and let me tell you, we walk into their house and systemic racial prejudice popped right up again, poor family, bad education, trouble with the law. "You're so smart, help Alejandro with his homework and then you can play nintendo. Yes Ms. P."
So at school, I'm racist, on the block, they're racist, inside their house, I'm sort of racist but I still might catch a beating if the wrong cousin was hanging out because his dad was in jail again and he's looking for a skinny white kid to blame.
What a muddled mess. How could you make sense out of that gibberish?