6 ms·

Recognizing race does not equal being racist at all, imho. I don't want to live in a society where I can't objectively (in no bad way whatsoever) acknowledge t

Recognizing race does not equal being racist at all, imho. I don't want to live in a society where I can't objectively (in no bad way whatsoever) acknowledge trait differences, whether they be skin colour or hair length.

stevenmays 9y ago
I think the issue here is the possibility of digital red-lining. While recognizing race is not racist, treating people differently because of their race is racist.
- w0m 9y ago
  Not necessarily - not showing African Americans spray-tan advertisements as an example - is that racist?
  - jquery 9y ago
    I think where it crosses the line is where we've explicitly made things illegal (such as housing discrimination) due to past bad behavior. I don't think targeting based on race is wrong, per se. BET shouldn't be forced to advertise to white people, a Christian dating site should be allowed to target Christians, etc. But housing is another category altogether and ad targeting based on protected categories should be disallowed. It sounds like Facebook realizes this and called this a "technical error."
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    There are not federal laws prohibiting discrimination in spray-tans, because there is not a very long history of horrendous behavior in discrimination in spray-tans. There is that history, and now those laws, for housing discrimination. Despite those laws, housing discrimination continues to exist. Enforcing those laws is a bare minimum.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > There are not federal laws prohibiting discrimination in spray-tans Insofar as the spray-tan vendor constitutes a public accommodation, this is untrue. But those laws have different precise contours than those for housing and employment, and would not seem as likely to apply to ad targeting.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Spray-tan is a very good example. However, as the article states - "Housing, employment and credit are the three areas in which federal law prohibits discriminatory ads" and it does make sense for those three areas.
    - emerged 9y ago
      How about if you're advertising for a job as spray-tan tester?
sologoub 9y ago
Differentiation is not the same as discrimination. The protected categories exist because harm was done on the basis of these identifiable traits. If all humanbeings were ethical and always did the right thing (which matched the universally shared definition of the right thing), we wouldn't need these laws. Since neither the universally accepted definition or the universally ethical people exist, we are stuck with the flawed legal system. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better though.
- npstr 9y ago
  There is no such thing as a "universally right thing", and not even laws can force it into existence.
  - sologoub 9y ago
    That's the point I was trying to make - it doesn't exist and laws at best convey the ethic that the majority does not care to oppose at the time of enactment.
    - npstr 9y ago
      I'm interpreting (the first part of) your post as "humans cant do the right thing so we need laws to force them to do it". I know the right thing for me. I don't need laws telling me about the right thing for me. No other human, or law, can know the right thing for me. And I humbly accept that neither can I know what's the right thing for others, nor construct laws that could guide any other person to the right thing for them.
      - afastow 9y ago
        "I don't need that law telling me the right thing for me" probably wouldn't go over that well in court but if you want to try it then go for it. The nice thing about laws is that they aren't asking for your permission. They aren't a suggestion, they are telling you things you can't do. If you don't like them you are free to attempt to change the laws but until you do that it's literally "obey or else."
Rotten194 9y ago
Do you really not think that only allowing certain races to rent houses isn't racist? Please google redlining.
- gcatalfamo 9y ago
  Of course that's racist, but I was referring to recognizing race, not if such ability were to be used for redlining which is despicable.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    What use in real estate is "recognizing" race, apart from discriminating based on it?
    - citrin_ru 9y ago
      Better (targeted) advertisement.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      To elaborate on another poster, in sales that are both high-value (to warrant extra effort from the advertiser) and not a commodity but with a high emotional value (like buying a home), it would certainly make business sense to ensure that the pictures in the advertising material contain people like themselves, and that requires recognizing race. Minorities respond well to ads that show members of their particular group. The same goes with many other viewpoints - you might have a version of your advertising material with a same sex couple, but (as e.g. the recent Starbucks ad situation shows) take care that certain groups of more conservative people don't get that ad but get some other version.
volgo 9y ago
Why? You can set difference prices for age, gender, and profession when it comes to insurance products because different demographics have different risk. What's so different about race?
- whistlerbrk 9y ago
  Re-read the parent comment, you are in agreement.
  - lsiebert 9y ago
    Actually, you can't by gender, under obamacare. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/obamacare-women_n_3541318.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/obamacare-women_n_...
    - volgo 9y ago
      You can discriminate by gender for car insurance. From DMV: "Why Women Pay Less for Car Insurance The statistics tend to show that as a group, women are less likely to: Get into a car accident." https://www.dmv.org/insurance/how-gender-affects-auto-insurance-rates.php https://www.dmv.org/insurance/how-gender-affects-auto-insura...
UncleMeat 9y ago
Sucks to be a black person in such a society, though. For no reason other than their skin color they are lumped in with a group of people lower average prosperity and then are denied access to resources and systems because of this grouping. Especially when these disparities are themselves caused by a history of deliberate oppression. How convenient that we get to continue to perpetuate inequalities that were themselves caused by the group in the majority. The grouping itself is a problem and produces false or misleading ideas about individuals. Men are far more likely to commit violent crimes than women. Should employers and landlords be able to blanket deny access to men?
- npstr 9y ago
  Employers and landlords should be able to deny access to anyone they please. It's their company and their property, after all.
  - jacalata 9y ago
    A company that doesn't rely on the resources and services of society can argue that. But a company that wants to rely on any infrastructure like roads or electricity, and a landlord relying on the socially enforced theory of property, is not in that group.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      That's a bad argument. There's no choice but to use roads, there's no way to create roads without government permission, there's no way to build any infrastructure without complying with myriad of expensive regulations (and for many things there are no way at all - try to build something where government doesn't want to permit something to be built) and they are paid with taxes that aren't exactly voluntary too. So the logic goes is "we control all the environment, we take money from you to create infrastructure the way we want and we ban you from competing with us - and then we demand from you compliance because you have no choice but to use the infrastructure". If there were an option to use government infrastructure or create and use independent one, then demands on the users of the government one could be justified - our infrastructure, our rules. But instead, there is no choice and the government actively suppresses the possibility of choice arising - in this case, making some demands for using the only possibility available is hypocritical at best.
joelrunyon 9y ago
I'm really confused because it seems most people haven't used these tools. In reality, people respond better to people that look like them in ads. People talk about this all the time when talking about "representation." Say you have a housing and want to target "families" - It's probably smart to create the following ad groups: * White families * Black families * Hispanic families * Mixed families * And however many more depending on ad group size. Then you'd create a specific ad using images that reflect those families. That's pretty standard online ad management + part of the reason why so much spend has shifted online - it can be a lot more precise. Sure, you could get one image and blanket target everyone, but I would bet your ROI gets beat by the above strategy.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Is that not just the tech equivalent of "Separate but Equal"?
  - swsieber 9y ago
    I don't think so - unless you consider an ad a service.
  - joelrunyon 9y ago
    No. It's called ad optimization.
  - baddox 9y ago
    Just as an educational aside, I think many people are mistaken about what the “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson actually was. I always used to think the decision said that it’s okay for restaurants and other buildings to provide separate restrooms and facilities for different ethnicities, but it was actually more than that. The decision said that it’s okay for state government to require all business to provide separate facilities. I think it’s a bad thing to do either way, for the record. Forgive me for hijacking your comment to throw in a little factoid.
- ghaff 9y ago
  That's true, but the article describes something that goes a step further. You don't even show ads to certain groups. Now, I'll agree that the distinction between having targeted ads and having targeted ads where one of the targets is basically No Ad starts to look like an odd distinction. Furthermore pre-digital, no one would have had any serious issue in only running ads in publications known to have specific readership demographics. (Like "families" which itself is a demographic.) And no one would have issues if these were ads targeted at specific blogs or other sites with a demographic different from almost everyone like Facebook is.
skissane 9y ago
But "race" isn't actually the same thing as "skin colour or hair length". "Race" is really a social/cultural concept, it is specific to a particular country/society. Most official forms in the US seem to believe humans can be classified into five races: "White", "Black or African American", "American Indian or Alaska Native", "Asian", "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander" (Source: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html ) None of those categories bears a straightforward relation to physical characteristics. e.g. "Asian" includes a wide range of skin tones, from quite pale to quite dark. And only Americans categorise humans in this way. Other countries either categorise them differently, or eschew racial classification entirely. e.g. "Asian" in the UK has a narrower meaning than it does in the US.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
egwynn 9y ago
... objectively (in no bad way whatsoever) acknowledge trait differences ... This is like the "frictionless surface" of sociology. It sure sounds like a great thing to shoot for, but our laws carry centuries (if not millennia) of cultural baggage along with them. It's nigh impossible to craft policies that aim only at the ideal, and ignore people's heavy emotional priors (e.g., if you're a person of race A who grew up amidst feelings of animosity towards people of race B that were brought on by centuries of physical and emotional trauma).
scarface74 9y ago
There is a historical context to why the fair housing act was instituted. For example, I am a minority that lives in a county that was infamous for being "whites only" just 30 years ago.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Sorry, there are limits to how far that is allowed to go. As with so many things, bad actors ruin things for everyone else, forcing onerous rules, regulations, and laws to prevent their bad actions from having too great a negative impact on society as a whole. We tried it the "let's just let things sort themselves out" way, and it didn't work, to the detriment of massive negative impact on the lives of people of color specifically. It's important to realize that it doesn't take a majority of white society to create a preference cascade which is horribly exclusionary toward non-whites, that's why we have the laws the way they are.

stevenmays 9y ago

I think the issue here is the possibility of digital red-lining. While recognizing race is not racist, treating people differently because of their race is racist.

w0m 9y ago
Not necessarily - not showing African Americans spray-tan advertisements as an example - is that racist?
- jquery 9y ago
  I think where it crosses the line is where we've explicitly made things illegal (such as housing discrimination) due to past bad behavior. I don't think targeting based on race is wrong, per se. BET shouldn't be forced to advertise to white people, a Christian dating site should be allowed to target Christians, etc. But housing is another category altogether and ad targeting based on protected categories should be disallowed. It sounds like Facebook realizes this and called this a "technical error."
- pwinnski 9y ago
  There are not federal laws prohibiting discrimination in spray-tans, because there is not a very long history of horrendous behavior in discrimination in spray-tans. There is that history, and now those laws, for housing discrimination. Despite those laws, housing discrimination continues to exist. Enforcing those laws is a bare minimum.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > There are not federal laws prohibiting discrimination in spray-tans Insofar as the spray-tan vendor constitutes a public accommodation, this is untrue. But those laws have different precise contours than those for housing and employment, and would not seem as likely to apply to ad targeting.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Spray-tan is a very good example. However, as the article states - "Housing, employment and credit are the three areas in which federal law prohibits discriminatory ads" and it does make sense for those three areas.
  - emerged 9y ago
    How about if you're advertising for a job as spray-tan tester?

sologoub 9y ago

Differentiation is not the same as discrimination. The protected categories exist because harm was done on the basis of these identifiable traits. If all humanbeings were ethical and always did the right thing (which matched the universally shared definition of the right thing), we wouldn't need these laws. Since neither the universally accepted definition or the universally ethical people exist, we are stuck with the flawed legal system. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better though.

npstr 9y ago
There is no such thing as a "universally right thing", and not even laws can force it into existence.
- sologoub 9y ago
  That's the point I was trying to make - it doesn't exist and laws at best convey the ethic that the majority does not care to oppose at the time of enactment.
  - npstr 9y ago
    I'm interpreting (the first part of) your post as "humans cant do the right thing so we need laws to force them to do it". I know the right thing for me. I don't need laws telling me about the right thing for me. No other human, or law, can know the right thing for me. And I humbly accept that neither can I know what's the right thing for others, nor construct laws that could guide any other person to the right thing for them.
    - afastow 9y ago
      "I don't need that law telling me the right thing for me" probably wouldn't go over that well in court but if you want to try it then go for it. The nice thing about laws is that they aren't asking for your permission. They aren't a suggestion, they are telling you things you can't do. If you don't like them you are free to attempt to change the laws but until you do that it's literally "obey or else."

Rotten194 9y ago

Do you really not think that only allowing certain races to rent houses isn't racist? Please google redlining.

gcatalfamo 9y ago
Of course that's racist, but I was referring to recognizing race, not if such ability were to be used for redlining which is despicable.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  What use in real estate is "recognizing" race, apart from discriminating based on it?
  - citrin_ru 9y ago
    Better (targeted) advertisement.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    To elaborate on another poster, in sales that are both high-value (to warrant extra effort from the advertiser) and not a commodity but with a high emotional value (like buying a home), it would certainly make business sense to ensure that the pictures in the advertising material contain people like themselves, and that requires recognizing race. Minorities respond well to ads that show members of their particular group. The same goes with many other viewpoints - you might have a version of your advertising material with a same sex couple, but (as e.g. the recent Starbucks ad situation shows) take care that certain groups of more conservative people don't get that ad but get some other version.

volgo 9y ago

Why? You can set difference prices for age, gender, and profession when it comes to insurance products because different demographics have different risk. What's so different about race?

whistlerbrk 9y ago
Re-read the parent comment, you are in agreement.
- lsiebert 9y ago
  Actually, you can't by gender, under obamacare. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/obamacare-women_n_3541318.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/obamacare-women_n_...
  - volgo 9y ago
    You can discriminate by gender for car insurance. From DMV: "Why Women Pay Less for Car Insurance The statistics tend to show that as a group, women are less likely to: Get into a car accident." https://www.dmv.org/insurance/how-gender-affects-auto-insurance-rates.php https://www.dmv.org/insurance/how-gender-affects-auto-insura...

UncleMeat 9y ago

Sucks to be a black person in such a society, though. For no reason other than their skin color they are lumped in with a group of people lower average prosperity and then are denied access to resources and systems because of this grouping. Especially when these disparities are themselves caused by a history of deliberate oppression. How convenient that we get to continue to perpetuate inequalities that were themselves caused by the group in the majority. The grouping itself is a problem and produces false or misleading ideas about individuals. Men are far more likely to commit violent crimes than women. Should employers and landlords be able to blanket deny access to men?

npstr 9y ago
Employers and landlords should be able to deny access to anyone they please. It's their company and their property, after all.
- jacalata 9y ago
  A company that doesn't rely on the resources and services of society can argue that. But a company that wants to rely on any infrastructure like roads or electricity, and a landlord relying on the socially enforced theory of property, is not in that group.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    That's a bad argument. There's no choice but to use roads, there's no way to create roads without government permission, there's no way to build any infrastructure without complying with myriad of expensive regulations (and for many things there are no way at all - try to build something where government doesn't want to permit something to be built) and they are paid with taxes that aren't exactly voluntary too. So the logic goes is "we control all the environment, we take money from you to create infrastructure the way we want and we ban you from competing with us - and then we demand from you compliance because you have no choice but to use the infrastructure". If there were an option to use government infrastructure or create and use independent one, then demands on the users of the government one could be justified - our infrastructure, our rules. But instead, there is no choice and the government actively suppresses the possibility of choice arising - in this case, making some demands for using the only possibility available is hypocritical at best.

joelrunyon 9y ago

I'm really confused because it seems most people haven't used these tools. In reality, people respond better to people that look like them in ads. People talk about this all the time when talking about "representation." Say you have a housing and want to target "families" - It's probably smart to create the following ad groups: * White families * Black families * Hispanic families * Mixed families * And however many more depending on ad group size. Then you'd create a specific ad using images that reflect those families. That's pretty standard online ad management + part of the reason why so much spend has shifted online - it can be a lot more precise. Sure, you could get one image and blanket target everyone, but I would bet your ROI gets beat by the above strategy.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Is that not just the tech equivalent of "Separate but Equal"?
- swsieber 9y ago
  I don't think so - unless you consider an ad a service.
- joelrunyon 9y ago
  No. It's called ad optimization.
- baddox 9y ago
  Just as an educational aside, I think many people are mistaken about what the “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson actually was. I always used to think the decision said that it’s okay for restaurants and other buildings to provide separate restrooms and facilities for different ethnicities, but it was actually more than that. The decision said that it’s okay for state government to require all business to provide separate facilities. I think it’s a bad thing to do either way, for the record. Forgive me for hijacking your comment to throw in a little factoid.
ghaff 9y ago
That's true, but the article describes something that goes a step further. You don't even show ads to certain groups. Now, I'll agree that the distinction between having targeted ads and having targeted ads where one of the targets is basically No Ad starts to look like an odd distinction. Furthermore pre-digital, no one would have had any serious issue in only running ads in publications known to have specific readership demographics. (Like "families" which itself is a demographic.) And no one would have issues if these were ads targeted at specific blogs or other sites with a demographic different from almost everyone like Facebook is.

skissane 9y ago

But "race" isn't actually the same thing as "skin colour or hair length". "Race" is really a social/cultural concept, it is specific to a particular country/society. Most official forms in the US seem to believe humans can be classified into five races: "White", "Black or African American", "American Indian or Alaska Native", "Asian", "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander" (Source: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html ) None of those categories bears a straightforward relation to physical characteristics. e.g. "Asian" includes a wide range of skin tones, from quite pale to quite dark. And only Americans categorise humans in this way. Other countries either categorise them differently, or eschew racial classification entirely. e.g. "Asian" in the UK has a narrower meaning than it does in the US.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

egwynn 9y ago

... objectively (in no bad way whatsoever) acknowledge trait differences ... This is like the "frictionless surface" of sociology. It sure sounds like a great thing to shoot for, but our laws carry centuries (if not millennia) of cultural baggage along with them. It's nigh impossible to craft policies that aim only at the ideal, and ignore people's heavy emotional priors (e.g., if you're a person of race A who grew up amidst feelings of animosity towards people of race B that were brought on by centuries of physical and emotional trauma).

scarface74 9y ago

There is a historical context to why the fair housing act was instituted. For example, I am a minority that lives in a county that was infamous for being "whites only" just 30 years ago.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Sorry, there are limits to how far that is allowed to go. As with so many things, bad actors ruin things for everyone else, forcing onerous rules, regulations, and laws to prevent their bad actions from having too great a negative impact on society as a whole. We tried it the "let's just let things sort themselves out" way, and it didn't work, to the detriment of massive negative impact on the lives of people of color specifically. It's important to realize that it doesn't take a majority of white society to create a preference cascade which is horribly exclusionary toward non-whites, that's why we have the laws the way they are.