5 ms·

As soon as you label people based on superficial personal traits that are outside of their control and without their consent, that's discrimination. If you sta

As soon as you label people based on superficial personal traits that are outside of their control and without their consent, that's discrimination. If you start giving some people special treatment just because of their ethnicity or gender, you're going to be opening up more cracks in the system for other people to fall through - and it will hurt those people even more because they will rightly feel that the whole system is working against them personally; down to the core specifics of who they are (unfortunate individuals who don't fit under any special label). Modern anti-discrimination approaches are often racist or sexist. They should not try to classify individuals into superficial groups, instead, they should be decided on an individual case-by-case basis based on the individual's history. The root of injustice is simply bad luck. Ethnicity and gender are only loosely correlated with bad luck but there is no causal relationship between them (not so much anymore at least). Anti-discrimination efforts should be aimed at averaging-out the effects of bad luck in people's lives; so that means we need a way to quantify luck on an individual basis. It's a difficult problem to solve, but it can't be solved by making gross generalizations.

trowawee 8y ago
> The root of injustice is simply bad luck. Ethnicity and gender are only loosely correlated with bad luck but there is no causal relationship between them (not so much anymore at least). This is wildly ignorant and ahistorical. There are literally thousands of books, articles, studies, movies, etc. disproving this. Literally just this week a study was released showing that predominantly white school districts collectively receive $23 billion more in funding than predominantly black districts, and that: "For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district,".[1] That isn't bad luck; that is a system designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation, and it's just one example of thousands, all of which are a moment of research away if you actually cared about this. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/696794821/why-white-school-districts-have-so-much-more-money?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20190226 https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/696794821/why-white-school-di...
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  The NPR story you site contains this quote: "As Rebecca Sibilia, founder and CEO of EdBuild, explains, a school district's resources often come down to how wealthy an area is and how much residents pay in taxes." Based on that, any causal relationship between race and school funding is far from simple. > That isn't bad luck; that is a system designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation Who you believe is designing the "system" for the purposes of segregation, and what evidence do you have to support it? Asking because everybody I've met who works in education seems to genuinely want all students to thrive.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    You can only say "The root of injustice is simply bad luck. Ethnicity and gender are only loosely correlated with bad luck but there is no causal relationship between them" if you ignore the years of segregation and red-lining and other racist policies designed to keep the Black man down.
- lambdadmitry 8y ago
  I have an issue with this style of reasoning. To me it seems just incredibly lazy to point at some arbitrary statistical fact and infer a "system designed to reinforce racial segregation". A system might be in place, but that sole number doesn't prove that. It just says something about the incredibly complex world we live in, but nothing about cause and effects or how world is supposed to be. Same goes for "there are multiple books" thing. That statement by itself doesn't reinforce your point, both because you aren't specific enough with that generic "books", and because there is a multitude of books written about vaccines causing autism. Book authors can be wrong. I'd also like to point out that the very article you've posted contradicts your point. As Rebecca Sibilia, founder and CEO of EdBuild, explains, a school district's resources often come down to how wealthy an area is and how much residents pay in taxes. "We have built a school funding system that is reliant on geography, and therefore the school funding system has inherited all of the historical ills of where we have forced and incentivized people to live," she says. So basically school funding partially depends on how affluent the area is. Due to various, mostly historical, reasons poor people are disproportionately black and so schools that have lower funding tend to have more black pupils. There is nothing requiring a grand racist conspiracy in this explanation, limited social mobility and income disparity are sufficient to explain this phenomenon. And you can never, ever be able to understand root causes just from that number you've cited. You'd need those causes to fix stuff, unless the only "solution" that you're trying to justify is "white people bad and rich, black people poor and good, take money from white people, give it to black people". That one isn't really helpful.

trowawee 8y ago

> The root of injustice is simply bad luck. Ethnicity and gender are only loosely correlated with bad luck but there is no causal relationship between them (not so much anymore at least). This is wildly ignorant and ahistorical. There are literally thousands of books, articles, studies, movies, etc. disproving this. Literally just this week a study was released showing that predominantly white school districts collectively receive $23 billion more in funding than predominantly black districts, and that: "For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district,".[1] That isn't bad luck; that is a system designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation, and it's just one example of thousands, all of which are a moment of research away if you actually cared about this. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/696794821/why-white-school-districts-have-so-much-more-money?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20190226 https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/696794821/why-white-school-di...

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
The NPR story you site contains this quote: "As Rebecca Sibilia, founder and CEO of EdBuild, explains, a school district's resources often come down to how wealthy an area is and how much residents pay in taxes." Based on that, any causal relationship between race and school funding is far from simple. > That isn't bad luck; that is a system designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation Who you believe is designing the "system" for the purposes of segregation, and what evidence do you have to support it? Asking because everybody I've met who works in education seems to genuinely want all students to thrive.
- DanBC 8y ago
  You can only say "The root of injustice is simply bad luck. Ethnicity and gender are only loosely correlated with bad luck but there is no causal relationship between them" if you ignore the years of segregation and red-lining and other racist policies designed to keep the Black man down.
lambdadmitry 8y ago
I have an issue with this style of reasoning. To me it seems just incredibly lazy to point at some arbitrary statistical fact and infer a "system designed to reinforce racial segregation". A system might be in place, but that sole number doesn't prove that. It just says something about the incredibly complex world we live in, but nothing about cause and effects or how world is supposed to be. Same goes for "there are multiple books" thing. That statement by itself doesn't reinforce your point, both because you aren't specific enough with that generic "books", and because there is a multitude of books written about vaccines causing autism. Book authors can be wrong. I'd also like to point out that the very article you've posted contradicts your point. As Rebecca Sibilia, founder and CEO of EdBuild, explains, a school district's resources often come down to how wealthy an area is and how much residents pay in taxes. "We have built a school funding system that is reliant on geography, and therefore the school funding system has inherited all of the historical ills of where we have forced and incentivized people to live," she says. So basically school funding partially depends on how affluent the area is. Due to various, mostly historical, reasons poor people are disproportionately black and so schools that have lower funding tend to have more black pupils. There is nothing requiring a grand racist conspiracy in this explanation, limited social mobility and income disparity are sufficient to explain this phenomenon. And you can never, ever be able to understand root causes just from that number you've cited. You'd need those causes to fix stuff, unless the only "solution" that you're trying to justify is "white people bad and rich, black people poor and good, take money from white people, give it to black people". That one isn't really helpful.