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Fortunately, we are armed with radical social justice tools like "empiricism," and are capable of noticing that some outcomes really do look like racism in acti

by andkon 9y ago

Fortunately, we are armed with radical social justice tools like "empiricism," and are capable of noticing that some outcomes really do look like racism in action. Maybe you don't understand the meaning of the word? "This happened on our planet" is not indicative of racism; "this happened in a racist society, as a result of policies that began with both racist intentions and which enacted racist outcomes" is. Try not to conflate the words "disproportionately affects" and "systemic discrimination." There are some things that disproportionately affect women, like "being able to become pregnant." That's a mere fact; frustratingly, it turns out to also be a thing that marks someone for systemic discrimination. "Being able to become pregnant" is, on its own, just a boring old fact, and we mustn't do anything about women being able to become pregnant at rates far higher than men. On the other hand, we ought to do something about ongoing misogyny, in all its modern and subtle forms. And yeah, if rural folks are disproportionately affected by a set of beliefs or policies that mark them for lesser treatment and poorer outcomes merely for their being rural dwellers, then we can't ignore that. Do you not understand that there's a difference between people being different, and people being marked for worse treatment because of their difference? I think all I'm asking is that, yes, you do fight against the root cause: the act of marking others for lesser treatment because of their group. If you deny that such a difference is salient to someone's treatment, you have freed yourself from noticing or helping their plight.

allthenews 9y ago
>empiricism >I think all I'm asking is that, yes, you do fight against the root cause When your body of data is so large, it is easy to mistake cherry picking and associated fallacies for empiricism. >if rural folks are disproportionately affected by a set of beliefs...we can't ignore that We can if these policies create more good than harm. Furthermore, even in this example, whether the issue is classism or collateral effects, although people would be quick to scream racism if we replaced "rural" with black, without sufficient evidence of racist intent. The biggest problem I see with a mindset like this is that the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome leads to policies which forgo merit to correct imagined racism. And we end up with less competent firefighters, law officers, doctors, lawyers, etc; and by lowering standards to attempt to force equity, all of society is worse off.

by andkon 9y ago

allthenews 9y ago

>empiricism >I think all I'm asking is that, yes, you do fight against the root cause When your body of data is so large, it is easy to mistake cherry picking and associated fallacies for empiricism. >if rural folks are disproportionately affected by a set of beliefs...we can't ignore that We can if these policies create more good than harm. Furthermore, even in this example, whether the issue is classism or collateral effects, although people would be quick to scream racism if we replaced "rural" with black, without sufficient evidence of racist intent. The biggest problem I see with a mindset like this is that the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome leads to policies which forgo merit to correct imagined racism. And we end up with less competent firefighters, law officers, doctors, lawyers, etc; and by lowering standards to attempt to force equity, all of society is worse off.