4 ms·

Stupid people seem incapable of understanding how color-blind solutions are able to still address racial disparities. If you were to, say, implement a program

Stupid people seem incapable of understanding how color-blind solutions are able to still address racial disparities. If you were to, say, implement a program to help poor people, rather than "people of color," then to the extent that "people of color" are overrepresented among the poor, then so, too, would the solution disproportionately assist "people of color." The benefits would be: 1.) we don't enter an infinite teeter totter of people arguing on behalf of the victimization of their identity groups 2.) we actually arrive at an equilibrium more rapidly 3.) we don't institutionalize the concept of race, and reinforce the idea that the color of your skin is a concept worthy of being categorized by 4.) we stop treating race as a proxy stand in for privilege, or competence (which is exactly what racists do), and instead target the direct thing that race was proxying 5.) by targeting the actual thing we're trying to remediate, we help all people affected by it, rather than limiting ourselves to the identity groups with the best PR. we also don't unnecessarily target people who belong to those identity groups and aren't actually in need of assistance, but are perceived to be simply by association through the color of their skin Just to reiterate: assume 1/6 people in a city were "people of color." Assume that 4/6 people who were poor in the city were "people of color." If you add a policy to help the poor, without considering race at all, 4/6 of the people that you help are going to be "people of color," despite them only being 1/6 of the population. It automatically targets the people who are affected disproportionately...

thelock85 6y ago
I understand your points and think they are fair in general. But leading with “stupid” makes you sound uninformed, and your theories are misaligned with longstanding sociopolitical climate in Oakland (not saying they don’t still apply). In fact, all participants must have a child minor, and be at or below 50% of median Bay Area income poverty line. 50% of participants must be 138% below federal poverty line. So the fact, not assumption, is 6/6 poor people of color are being targeted. And yes, that is unfair to poor white people in Oakland, and it’s unfortunate that the sociopolitical climate in Oakland allows for it. But color-blind policies still yield such inequities. Case in point, affluent SF and Marin county residents flocking to vaccination pop-ups in poor neighborhoods where there are no eligibility screens. We should keep debating these things (it’s healthy for addressing the problems) but I don’t think any idealistic approach will ever be politically or logistically successful. Update: another factor is that this is philanthropically supported, and my assumption is that they either required or signed off on race-based programming. So if you are the mayor, are you saying no to free money for your constituents?
- ralusek 6y ago
  > So the fact, not assumption, is 6/6 poor people of color are being targeted. If this is how the demography played out when just filtering by economic criteria, so be it. I have no issue with something disproportionately affecting populations. I do, however, have an issue with using race as a criteria for almost any decision. > But color-blind policies still yield such inequities. Case in point, affluent SF and Marin county residents flocking to vaccination pop-ups in poor neighborhoods where there are no eligibility screens. I didn't say to not use eligibility screens, I said to not use race as criteria. If you use economic criteria, people from Marin aren't going to be eligible. > I don’t think any idealistic approach will ever be politically or logistically successful. You think economic eligibility is idealistic? Also, you think racial eligibility is not? > So if you are the mayor, are you saying no to free money for your constituents? If the government is involved in any capacity, yes, I think that's reasonable. I think the government should be forbidden from using race as a criteria in any of its decision making. If it's purely private philanthropy, I obviously think they should be able to do what they want, but I still object to it for all of the reasons I've outlined.
  - thelock85 6y ago
    > You think economic eligibility is idealistic? Also, you think racial eligibility is not? I think income eligibility is an imperfect proxy just like race eligibility. But my actual point was that color/race-blind approaches are idealistic in places and spaces where colorist and racial activism is baked into the historical and contemporary fabric of society (e.g. Oakland). > If the government is involved in any capacity, yes, I think that's reasonable. I think the government should be forbidden from using race as a criteria in any of its decision making. This where I disgree, respectfully. If the government was a willing partner in explicit discrimination based on race from slavery > Jim Crow > New Deal > mass incarceration, then it should be a willing partner in righting the inequities created. I can see the other argument that this evidence of exactly why we shouldn't have race-based approaches, but I feel this is an apples to oranges comparison. Assuming government-sponsored racism ended with the Civil Rights Acts of the 50s and 60s (which I don't believe) then your are looking at 300 years of policy and practice prejudiced against people of color vs. ~70 years of policy (and slowly adopted practices) either neutral or prejudiced in favor of people of color. Anyways I feel like I'm condensing a complex topic, and this isn't the forum or format for me to go deeper. (not that I won't continue responding your questions)
JPKab 6y ago
American universities are a source of salaries and unending job security for a group of activist professors, who fall into categories of activism that help bolster the reputations of the institutions of being compliant with Title IX to maintain federal funding. These Title IX driven activists care about women and black people. Not very much about Latinos or Asians, because historically Asians aren't underrepresented at universities, and therefore aren't a Title IX liability. They don't care about Latinos because they don't have the political clout in the Democratic party that black voters do, and are markedly underrepresented in the party considering they are a larger demographic group in the US. These activists are the foundational cornerstone for seeding activism into government. Poor whites in trailer parks don't have professional activists at universities to stand up for them. Therefore programs like this come along, and Latinos, poor whites, poor Asians are all ignored. It's explicitly racist, and we can thank the university administrators for employing these people and giving them free time and salaries combined with an unending stream of gullible students, many of whom have no business being in an educational institution due to them being mediocre at best high school students.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Stupid people seem incapable of understanding how color-blind solutions are able to still address racial disparities. This is a targeted demonstration program specifically for the purpose of providing concrete support for the argument that guaranteed income, a color-blind policy that the sponsoring organizations are dedicated to promoting, is effective in mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color. That is, while your complaint is (if somewhat inflammatorily phrased, given the strong historical basis on which notionally color-blind solutions are deeply distrusted) not entirely unreasonable in the abstract, it is profoundly ignorant to direct it at this project considering that the project’s premise is exactly in line with it, and the distrust for such approaches that you paint as stupid is exactly what the project aims, with regard to a particular policy, to overcome.
- ralusek 6y ago
  I don't understand how this is a demonstration of a color-blind policy mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color; it's not a color-blind policy. In what way is this policy meant to overcome distrust of color-blind solutions?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I don't understand how this is a demonstration of a color-blind policy mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color; it's not a color-blind policy. It’s a demonstration to the communities in question and their advocates that what they would get in a GMI would mitigate problems in those communities, as a way of overcoming the resistance in those communities to the approach. The approach that is being advocated is color-blind, the issue this program is targeted at overcoming is not. Yes, a broad color-blind GMI itself would be an even-better way of making that point, but its a lot more expensive for donation-funded charities to execute, especially when a large portion of the audience they hope to rally behind the idea is resistant to it. This is a tool for chipping away at that resistance. And its specific shape has been shaped by interaction with the exact people whose resistance it is targeted at.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
Miner49er 6y ago
Doesn't this math only work if the majority of poor people are POC? If the majority aren't, and you end up giving more white people, you still will end up with POC being disproportionately poorer compared to white people. If you want to get straight to targeting the actual thing you want to remediate, what you need to do is eliminate unjust wealth inequality altogether.
- ralusek 6y ago
  If the math doesn't work out in such a way that POC are disproportionately benefited by helping poor people...then that would mean that POC weren't overrepresented amongst the poor.

thelock85 6y ago

I understand your points and think they are fair in general. But leading with “stupid” makes you sound uninformed, and your theories are misaligned with longstanding sociopolitical climate in Oakland (not saying they don’t still apply). In fact, all participants must have a child minor, and be at or below 50% of median Bay Area income poverty line. 50% of participants must be 138% below federal poverty line. So the fact, not assumption, is 6/6 poor people of color are being targeted. And yes, that is unfair to poor white people in Oakland, and it’s unfortunate that the sociopolitical climate in Oakland allows for it. But color-blind policies still yield such inequities. Case in point, affluent SF and Marin county residents flocking to vaccination pop-ups in poor neighborhoods where there are no eligibility screens. We should keep debating these things (it’s healthy for addressing the problems) but I don’t think any idealistic approach will ever be politically or logistically successful. Update: another factor is that this is philanthropically supported, and my assumption is that they either required or signed off on race-based programming. So if you are the mayor, are you saying no to free money for your constituents?

ralusek 6y ago
> So the fact, not assumption, is 6/6 poor people of color are being targeted. If this is how the demography played out when just filtering by economic criteria, so be it. I have no issue with something disproportionately affecting populations. I do, however, have an issue with using race as a criteria for almost any decision. > But color-blind policies still yield such inequities. Case in point, affluent SF and Marin county residents flocking to vaccination pop-ups in poor neighborhoods where there are no eligibility screens. I didn't say to not use eligibility screens, I said to not use race as criteria. If you use economic criteria, people from Marin aren't going to be eligible. > I don’t think any idealistic approach will ever be politically or logistically successful. You think economic eligibility is idealistic? Also, you think racial eligibility is not? > So if you are the mayor, are you saying no to free money for your constituents? If the government is involved in any capacity, yes, I think that's reasonable. I think the government should be forbidden from using race as a criteria in any of its decision making. If it's purely private philanthropy, I obviously think they should be able to do what they want, but I still object to it for all of the reasons I've outlined.
- thelock85 6y ago
  > You think economic eligibility is idealistic? Also, you think racial eligibility is not? I think income eligibility is an imperfect proxy just like race eligibility. But my actual point was that color/race-blind approaches are idealistic in places and spaces where colorist and racial activism is baked into the historical and contemporary fabric of society (e.g. Oakland). > If the government is involved in any capacity, yes, I think that's reasonable. I think the government should be forbidden from using race as a criteria in any of its decision making. This where I disgree, respectfully. If the government was a willing partner in explicit discrimination based on race from slavery > Jim Crow > New Deal > mass incarceration, then it should be a willing partner in righting the inequities created. I can see the other argument that this evidence of exactly why we shouldn't have race-based approaches, but I feel this is an apples to oranges comparison. Assuming government-sponsored racism ended with the Civil Rights Acts of the 50s and 60s (which I don't believe) then your are looking at 300 years of policy and practice prejudiced against people of color vs. ~70 years of policy (and slowly adopted practices) either neutral or prejudiced in favor of people of color. Anyways I feel like I'm condensing a complex topic, and this isn't the forum or format for me to go deeper. (not that I won't continue responding your questions)

JPKab 6y ago

American universities are a source of salaries and unending job security for a group of activist professors, who fall into categories of activism that help bolster the reputations of the institutions of being compliant with Title IX to maintain federal funding. These Title IX driven activists care about women and black people. Not very much about Latinos or Asians, because historically Asians aren't underrepresented at universities, and therefore aren't a Title IX liability. They don't care about Latinos because they don't have the political clout in the Democratic party that black voters do, and are markedly underrepresented in the party considering they are a larger demographic group in the US. These activists are the foundational cornerstone for seeding activism into government. Poor whites in trailer parks don't have professional activists at universities to stand up for them. Therefore programs like this come along, and Latinos, poor whites, poor Asians are all ignored. It's explicitly racist, and we can thank the university administrators for employing these people and giving them free time and salaries combined with an unending stream of gullible students, many of whom have no business being in an educational institution due to them being mediocre at best high school students.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Stupid people seem incapable of understanding how color-blind solutions are able to still address racial disparities. This is a targeted demonstration program specifically for the purpose of providing concrete support for the argument that guaranteed income, a color-blind policy that the sponsoring organizations are dedicated to promoting, is effective in mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color. That is, while your complaint is (if somewhat inflammatorily phrased, given the strong historical basis on which notionally color-blind solutions are deeply distrusted) not entirely unreasonable in the abstract, it is profoundly ignorant to direct it at this project considering that the project’s premise is exactly in line with it, and the distrust for such approaches that you paint as stupid is exactly what the project aims, with regard to a particular policy, to overcome.

ralusek 6y ago
I don't understand how this is a demonstration of a color-blind policy mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color; it's not a color-blind policy. In what way is this policy meant to overcome distrust of color-blind solutions?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I don't understand how this is a demonstration of a color-blind policy mitigating systemic problems facing communities of color; it's not a color-blind policy. It’s a demonstration to the communities in question and their advocates that what they would get in a GMI would mitigate problems in those communities, as a way of overcoming the resistance in those communities to the approach. The approach that is being advocated is color-blind, the issue this program is targeted at overcoming is not. Yes, a broad color-blind GMI itself would be an even-better way of making that point, but its a lot more expensive for donation-funded charities to execute, especially when a large portion of the audience they hope to rally behind the idea is resistant to it. This is a tool for chipping away at that resistance. And its specific shape has been shaped by interaction with the exact people whose resistance it is targeted at.
- dragonwriter 6y ago

Miner49er 6y ago

Doesn't this math only work if the majority of poor people are POC? If the majority aren't, and you end up giving more white people, you still will end up with POC being disproportionately poorer compared to white people. If you want to get straight to targeting the actual thing you want to remediate, what you need to do is eliminate unjust wealth inequality altogether.

ralusek 6y ago
If the math doesn't work out in such a way that POC are disproportionately benefited by helping poor people...then that would mean that POC weren't overrepresented amongst the poor.