8 ms·

It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. We

It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. We need better words.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. This is quite true. But then, there is considerable diversity in that issue within each the right and the left, too. > The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. But this is not even approximately true. Though it is an oft-repeated talking point of the right.
tunesmith 8y ago
Those words are "systemic" or "implicit" or "institutional", etc. All you really need is a proof or example that racist/sexist outcomes are possible even when there is no overt intent. And there are plenty of examples like that out there. Failure to accept that those examples exist, however, is something beyond just looking at intent instead of outcome.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  There's plenty of "systemic" racism/sexism/etc. coming from the left, though. Social engineering in general is a recipe for every kind of unintended consequences at the "systemic/institutional" level, and the left is huge on social engineering.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    "Systemic" doesn't even have to be left/right though, that's the point. It can simply be well-meaning people that keep ignorantly doing things they way they did before, unaware that their system has racist/sexist impact. I don't know what you mean by social engineering, by the way. I've only heard it in the context of hacking, like calling customer support and pretending to be someone else to try to get their mother's maiden name or whatever.
    - ad_hominem 8y ago
      Not the person you're responding to but I took their meaning to be social engineering in the sense of someone's purposeful planning and intercession in areas where there is a social output, fiddling with whatever knobs are available to shape the desired output. For example, Harvard admitting less Asians because they are over-represented compared to other races. If you take your view that racism is an emergent phenomenon that you can spot based purely on the outcome, then Harvard was exactly correct to deny more Asians admission than other races, yes? If Harvard didn't do that, then the outcome of their admission process would've been "racist." Many would disagree with that interpretation of racism.
      - tunesmith 8y ago
        That's not my view, so that seems a straw man.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  I'd also like to bring up the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Just because a policy seems reasonable and has straightforward justifications for all of its pieces doesn't mean it wasn't maliciously designed to another purpose. The stated intent is not always the only intent and if the results...
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    Perhaps even more apropos to your point is the Underhanded C Contest: http://www.underhanded-c.org/ http://www.underhanded-c.org/
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    That's true too, yes. I just think it's interesting that malicious intent isn't required. I think it helps to talk about it too - if you can approach the participants and assume good faith, allow them to believe that you believe the output is completely unintentional, then maybe it will be easier for them to agree to change their system.
- ad_hominem 8y ago
  I don't see how those adjectives add any clarity to the situation, since you can swap them out interchangeably and you're still describing the same vague, handwavy sense of racism somewhere being a cause for an unequal outcome. Larry Elder had an interesting take on "systemic racism" IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    This isn't about unequal outcomes, it's about racist/sexist outcomes. It's very possible to have unequal outcomes without them being racist/sexist. And despite what seems to be commonly believed, liberals/left/progressives/democrats/etc don't tend to have a problem with that. It's also not vague and handwavy. If you'd like to explore an example of institutional racism, check out the Parable of the Polygons. It's a clear, simple model with repeatable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/
BeetleB 8y ago
Haidt's book The Righteous Mind does touch on this - he'll likely have references to the studies in his book. What he says the studies show: Conservative ideology: Fairness is about guaranteeing everyone equal rights. If different people have different outcomes, the question is: Did one person have more rights than the other? If so, let's correct for it. If not, it is because the person did not fully utilize his/her resources. However, this step is often omitted and people jump to "Person did not put in effort." Liberal ideology: Fairness is about guaranteeing equal outcomes. This often (but not always) ends up being a metric regardless of the effort the person put in - so if the outcomes differ, it's a sign of something unfair at play. There is overlap between the two, and they are not fundamentally at odds with each other. However, as a lot of pop psychology has taught us: People are fundamentally lazy in applying analytical thought, and will look for simple proxies. So instead of thinking through as their ideologies dictate, they will jump to the conclusion.
- tunesmith 8y ago
  If his studies basically equated liberal ideology with communism (equal outcomes), I think I'm a lot less inclined to read his book. You know, what I'd really like is for parties or candidates to identify what they think the appropriate GINI coefficient should be for the US.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    You inspired me to update my post: >However, as a lot of pop psychology has taught us: People are fundamentally lazy in applying analytical thought, and will look for simple proxies. I would not recommend judging books based on a random Internet comment, even my one.
    - tunesmith 8y ago
      I wouldn't qualify myself as lazy for choosing not to read that book. :-) There are a lot of books out there!
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
dgzl 8y ago
Unfortunately many political words are polluted with garbage understanding of their meaning, and have been used to polarize and divide the people.
pdkl95 8y ago
The right[2] looks at intent because that's what matters in a hierarchical view of society. This division is from a fundamental difference in what societies are. This can be observed din how they use language; from one of the most enlightening articles[1] I've ever read: > One of the biggest problems of the entire Culture Wars is that people like us [the left[2]] use language impart information. We usually are not aware that a nice big chunk of population does not use language in that way at all. Their use of language is that of Phatic Language [...] In a hierarchical society [the right[2]], language is [often] not used for exchange of information [...] It is used to establish social hierarchy. For a good explanation of how this works, George Lakoff's lecture[3] "Moral Politics". [1] https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-resistance-of-s https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-res... [2] The "left"/"right" labels are being use in a general psychological sense, which doesn't always match the political groups with the same names. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM

It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. We need better words.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> It just dawned on me that the left and right absolutely do not think of “racist” exactly the same. This is quite true. But then, there is considerable diversity in that issue within each the right and the left, too. > The left looks at outcome and the right looks at intent. But this is not even approximately true. Though it is an oft-repeated talking point of the right.

tunesmith 8y ago

Those words are "systemic" or "implicit" or "institutional", etc. All you really need is a proof or example that racist/sexist outcomes are possible even when there is no overt intent. And there are plenty of examples like that out there. Failure to accept that those examples exist, however, is something beyond just looking at intent instead of outcome.

zozbot123 8y ago
There's plenty of "systemic" racism/sexism/etc. coming from the left, though. Social engineering in general is a recipe for every kind of unintended consequences at the "systemic/institutional" level, and the left is huge on social engineering.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tunesmith 8y ago
  "Systemic" doesn't even have to be left/right though, that's the point. It can simply be well-meaning people that keep ignorantly doing things they way they did before, unaware that their system has racist/sexist impact. I don't know what you mean by social engineering, by the way. I've only heard it in the context of hacking, like calling customer support and pretending to be someone else to try to get their mother's maiden name or whatever.
  - ad_hominem 8y ago
    Not the person you're responding to but I took their meaning to be social engineering in the sense of someone's purposeful planning and intercession in areas where there is a social output, fiddling with whatever knobs are available to shape the desired output. For example, Harvard admitting less Asians because they are over-represented compared to other races. If you take your view that racism is an emergent phenomenon that you can spot based purely on the outcome, then Harvard was exactly correct to deny more Asians admission than other races, yes? If Harvard didn't do that, then the outcome of their admission process would've been "racist." Many would disagree with that interpretation of racism.
    - tunesmith 8y ago
      That's not my view, so that seems a straw man.
saalweachter 8y ago
I'd also like to bring up the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Just because a policy seems reasonable and has straightforward justifications for all of its pieces doesn't mean it wasn't maliciously designed to another purpose. The stated intent is not always the only intent and if the results...
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Perhaps even more apropos to your point is the Underhanded C Contest: http://www.underhanded-c.org/ http://www.underhanded-c.org/
- tunesmith 8y ago
  That's true too, yes. I just think it's interesting that malicious intent isn't required. I think it helps to talk about it too - if you can approach the participants and assume good faith, allow them to believe that you believe the output is completely unintentional, then maybe it will be easier for them to agree to change their system.
ad_hominem 8y ago
I don't see how those adjectives add any clarity to the situation, since you can swap them out interchangeably and you're still describing the same vague, handwavy sense of racism somewhere being a cause for an unequal outcome. Larry Elder had an interesting take on "systemic racism" IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM
- tunesmith 8y ago
  This isn't about unequal outcomes, it's about racist/sexist outcomes. It's very possible to have unequal outcomes without them being racist/sexist. And despite what seems to be commonly believed, liberals/left/progressives/democrats/etc don't tend to have a problem with that. It's also not vague and handwavy. If you'd like to explore an example of institutional racism, check out the Parable of the Polygons. It's a clear, simple model with repeatable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/

BeetleB 8y ago

Haidt's book The Righteous Mind does touch on this - he'll likely have references to the studies in his book. What he says the studies show: Conservative ideology: Fairness is about guaranteeing everyone equal rights. If different people have different outcomes, the question is: Did one person have more rights than the other? If so, let's correct for it. If not, it is because the person did not fully utilize his/her resources. However, this step is often omitted and people jump to "Person did not put in effort." Liberal ideology: Fairness is about guaranteeing equal outcomes. This often (but not always) ends up being a metric regardless of the effort the person put in - so if the outcomes differ, it's a sign of something unfair at play. There is overlap between the two, and they are not fundamentally at odds with each other. However, as a lot of pop psychology has taught us: People are fundamentally lazy in applying analytical thought, and will look for simple proxies. So instead of thinking through as their ideologies dictate, they will jump to the conclusion.

tunesmith 8y ago
If his studies basically equated liberal ideology with communism (equal outcomes), I think I'm a lot less inclined to read his book. You know, what I'd really like is for parties or candidates to identify what they think the appropriate GINI coefficient should be for the US.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  You inspired me to update my post: >However, as a lot of pop psychology has taught us: People are fundamentally lazy in applying analytical thought, and will look for simple proxies. I would not recommend judging books based on a random Internet comment, even my one.
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    I wouldn't qualify myself as lazy for choosing not to read that book. :-) There are a lot of books out there!
- claudiawerner 8y ago

dgzl 8y ago

Unfortunately many political words are polluted with garbage understanding of their meaning, and have been used to polarize and divide the people.

pdkl95 8y ago

The right[2] looks at intent because that's what matters in a hierarchical view of society. This division is from a fundamental difference in what societies are. This can be observed din how they use language; from one of the most enlightening articles[1] I've ever read: > One of the biggest problems of the entire Culture Wars is that people like us [the left[2]] use language impart information. We usually are not aware that a nice big chunk of population does not use language in that way at all. Their use of language is that of Phatic Language [...] In a hierarchical society [the right[2]], language is [often] not used for exchange of information [...] It is used to establish social hierarchy. For a good explanation of how this works, George Lakoff's lecture[3] "Moral Politics". [1] https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-resistance-of-s https://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-res... [2] The "left"/"right" labels are being use in a general psychological sense, which doesn't always match the political groups with the same names. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM