7 ms·

> “The idea of Cupertino is to have people living here that are educated with degrees. Bringing this in would bring a lot of probably lower income people, and t

by badpun 8y ago

> “The idea of Cupertino is to have people living here that are educated with degrees. Bringing this in would bring a lot of probably lower income people, and that would definitely bring down our median average household income.” > American urban policy is filled with slight of hand comments and maneuvers just like this. How do you know they don't actually mean it? People can be as biased against low income neighbors as against neighbors of races different than their own.

40acres 8y ago
On an individual basis, you really don't know, this is why to come to a conclusion that policy methods are discriminatory you need to look at large scale patterns. This shows a bit with regard to voter rights in America. If you look at the history, most state level voter laws are designed in a way to suppress the vote -- but these laws are championed as ways to "stop voter fraud" among other things. The individual who made this comment may or may not have racial bias, but I'd love to see how the Cupertino city council has dealt with other policies which may change the racial make up of the city in the past.
epistasis 8y ago
Race and low income are inextricably linked because of racist past policies, which fund schools vastly differently based on property values, which provides very different access to education, which provides very different access to opportunities in the future. This particular commenter? I think they were 14 and just really stupid (edit: according to the Cupertino mayor, who was asked about a similar comment at 45:45 here [1]). So maybe not racist. But having spent enough time talking to adults who also talk like this, if you talk long enough the racist undertones become overtones. It's baked into our society, so though it's completely unacceptable to reveal these racist attitudes, the classist attitudes are slightly more acceptable. It's definitely a dogwhistle to others, even if this particular commenter was not intentionally dogwhistling. [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gimme-shelter-the-california-housing-crisis-podcast/id1280087136?mt=2&i=1000420161841 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gimme-shelter-the-califo...
- badpun 8y ago
  > This particular commenter? I think they were 14 and just really stupid. So maybe not racist. But having spent enough time talking to adults who also talk like this, if you talk long enough the racist undertones become overtones. It's baked into our society, so though it's completely unacceptable to reveal these racist attitudes, the classist attitudes are slightly more acceptable. I'm not from America, and my own country is 99.9% white, so this is all foreign and very interesting for me. I'm wondering to what degree racism is about the actual race (physical traits) and to what degree about the socioeconomic traits that correlate with race. For example, I wonder if a typical white racist person would stil prefer a white drug addict or criminal as a neighbor over say someone like president Obama.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    In my experience, with something that extreme %99.999 of people prefer Obama over the white drug addict. But racism is on a spectrum, it's not a yes/no thing. Most of the existing racism is far more subtle, like fears over foreigners, or the different and the new. The full-on give-me-white-drug-addict-over Obama is usually only constrained to the super rare neo-Nazi breed of racism. Different cultures are also quite shocking. So even if that new family that moved in makes just as much money, has just as much education, but cooks different foods that smell funny to you, or talks in different ways, or puts on different displays, that can greatly impact acceptance. I mean, I can't say that I don't have some racist attitudes, because over my life time I've discovered that some things that I thought were perfectly reasonable non-racial preferences end up getting really intertwined. Especially because I grew up in a very white area, with almost no history of the racial prejudices that affect parts of the US, I didn't understand how racism played out until I was in an area with more diversity, and it was a learning process to even spot it, or figure out what was insulting or derogatory, since I had so little experience with it. But because so much of the racism is not the neo-Nazi type, is more subtle and probably less conscious, it's important to not be too moralizing about it, because moralizing just entrenches it. Instead of beating someone up over it, it's far better to show how the attitude has negative effects, and how there can be positive effects from not having that attitude. Of course, when people are speaking in codes, like they do in these meetings about "preserving neighborhood character," all that goes out the window. The article goes through lots of great examples of how even in the past, the racism was perpetuated with the cover of other excuses.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Well for one as soon as a counter example to what they nominally are complaining about comes up they suddenly break out in "no not like that". If they can never be pleased when their nominal reasons are satisfied and/or their web of objections are inconsistent it is clear something else is at play and that something else is usually racism. Look at Harvard and their shifting metrics for instance among others. At first the standardized tests were there for quality nominally for "the right people" for instance including deliberate cultural bias to the country club set as a shibboleth - even the most well read student in the "classics curriculum" wouldn't really know small sailcraft vocabulary and practical nautical backgrounds long moved onto motorboats. Then Jews started doing too good on them and they started adding other criteria like being "well rounded". For instance, wealthy asians move in and they now complain about it being "unaffordable" despite previous issues with affordable housing. I have heard about California public transit upgrades facing resistance with obvious dogwhistle opposition about how train lines will bring in crime. When a train is a goddamn terrible escape vehicle given its linearity and predictability even without it featuring its own police force. Meanwhile and anyone with a truck and crowbar can reach and burglarize and moving truck rentals are both cheap and good camouflage.
- masonic 8y ago
  a train is a goddamn terrible escape vehicle BART trains, especially in the East Bay, have harbored mass robberies and takeovers multiple times.

by badpun 8y ago

40acres 8y ago

On an individual basis, you really don't know, this is why to come to a conclusion that policy methods are discriminatory you need to look at large scale patterns. This shows a bit with regard to voter rights in America. If you look at the history, most state level voter laws are designed in a way to suppress the vote -- but these laws are championed as ways to "stop voter fraud" among other things. The individual who made this comment may or may not have racial bias, but I'd love to see how the Cupertino city council has dealt with other policies which may change the racial make up of the city in the past.

epistasis 8y ago

Race and low income are inextricably linked because of racist past policies, which fund schools vastly differently based on property values, which provides very different access to education, which provides very different access to opportunities in the future. This particular commenter? I think they were 14 and just really stupid (edit: according to the Cupertino mayor, who was asked about a similar comment at 45:45 here [1]). So maybe not racist. But having spent enough time talking to adults who also talk like this, if you talk long enough the racist undertones become overtones. It's baked into our society, so though it's completely unacceptable to reveal these racist attitudes, the classist attitudes are slightly more acceptable. It's definitely a dogwhistle to others, even if this particular commenter was not intentionally dogwhistling. [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gimme-shelter-the-california-housing-crisis-podcast/id1280087136?mt=2&i=1000420161841 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gimme-shelter-the-califo...

badpun 8y ago
> This particular commenter? I think they were 14 and just really stupid. So maybe not racist. But having spent enough time talking to adults who also talk like this, if you talk long enough the racist undertones become overtones. It's baked into our society, so though it's completely unacceptable to reveal these racist attitudes, the classist attitudes are slightly more acceptable. I'm not from America, and my own country is 99.9% white, so this is all foreign and very interesting for me. I'm wondering to what degree racism is about the actual race (physical traits) and to what degree about the socioeconomic traits that correlate with race. For example, I wonder if a typical white racist person would stil prefer a white drug addict or criminal as a neighbor over say someone like president Obama.
- epistasis 8y ago
  In my experience, with something that extreme %99.999 of people prefer Obama over the white drug addict. But racism is on a spectrum, it's not a yes/no thing. Most of the existing racism is far more subtle, like fears over foreigners, or the different and the new. The full-on give-me-white-drug-addict-over Obama is usually only constrained to the super rare neo-Nazi breed of racism. Different cultures are also quite shocking. So even if that new family that moved in makes just as much money, has just as much education, but cooks different foods that smell funny to you, or talks in different ways, or puts on different displays, that can greatly impact acceptance. I mean, I can't say that I don't have some racist attitudes, because over my life time I've discovered that some things that I thought were perfectly reasonable non-racial preferences end up getting really intertwined. Especially because I grew up in a very white area, with almost no history of the racial prejudices that affect parts of the US, I didn't understand how racism played out until I was in an area with more diversity, and it was a learning process to even spot it, or figure out what was insulting or derogatory, since I had so little experience with it. But because so much of the racism is not the neo-Nazi type, is more subtle and probably less conscious, it's important to not be too moralizing about it, because moralizing just entrenches it. Instead of beating someone up over it, it's far better to show how the attitude has negative effects, and how there can be positive effects from not having that attitude. Of course, when people are speaking in codes, like they do in these meetings about "preserving neighborhood character," all that goes out the window. The article goes through lots of great examples of how even in the past, the racism was perpetuated with the cover of other excuses.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Well for one as soon as a counter example to what they nominally are complaining about comes up they suddenly break out in "no not like that". If they can never be pleased when their nominal reasons are satisfied and/or their web of objections are inconsistent it is clear something else is at play and that something else is usually racism. Look at Harvard and their shifting metrics for instance among others. At first the standardized tests were there for quality nominally for "the right people" for instance including deliberate cultural bias to the country club set as a shibboleth - even the most well read student in the "classics curriculum" wouldn't really know small sailcraft vocabulary and practical nautical backgrounds long moved onto motorboats. Then Jews started doing too good on them and they started adding other criteria like being "well rounded". For instance, wealthy asians move in and they now complain about it being "unaffordable" despite previous issues with affordable housing. I have heard about California public transit upgrades facing resistance with obvious dogwhistle opposition about how train lines will bring in crime. When a train is a goddamn terrible escape vehicle given its linearity and predictability even without it featuring its own police force. Meanwhile and anyone with a truck and crowbar can reach and burglarize and moving truck rentals are both cheap and good camouflage.

masonic 8y ago
a train is a goddamn terrible escape vehicle BART trains, especially in the East Bay, have harbored mass robberies and takeovers multiple times.