3 ms·

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 longst

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)
  - ralusek 6y ago
    > 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. The claim is that slavery, red-lining, Jim Crow, War on Drugs, etc, will have either specifically targeted black Americans, or disproportionately had a negative impact on them. That negative impact will have manifested in specific problems, like low intergenerational wealth. So if red-lining, for example, resulted in less black Americans whose parents were able to establish a lineage of intergenerational wealth, and were therefore less likely to be able to buy a house themselves, the problem still doesn't need to be framed in terms of race. The government was absolutely wrong to have a policy in place which discriminated on the basis of race, but again, the problem can be entirely addressed by going after the specific problem. If 10 black people are unable to buy homes because of red-lining, 1 Asian is unable to buy a home because they were an asylum seeker that came to the country with nothing, 1 white person is unable to buy a home because they were born to a single parent who is addicted to drugs, and 1 Latino is unable to buy a home because they started their education speaking English as a second language and struggled through school...I don't actually care what put them in that position. But if you come up with a program that indiscriminately assists people in being first-time homeowners, the black people in this hypothetical become the primary beneficiaries of the color-blind policy. To say, "well, sorry Asian person, but less things were done to historically marginalize people that look like you than were done to the people that look like them, so we're not going to help you," is a horrible policy. It has all of the same pitfalls as any other racist policy. And the color-blind solution not only undoes the negative impact of redlining by helping the people who were impacted by it, but if you are actually concerned with racial retributive justice (which you shouldn't be), it is also allocating a disproportionate amount of resources in order to help the victims of that racial policy. So the government pays for its mistakes either way, but this way it does it without continuing to legitimize the concept of race, and without the massive imprecision that arises from using race as a proxy. There is no legitimate reason for any decision to be made on the basis of race, period.

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)
- ralusek 6y ago
  > 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. The claim is that slavery, red-lining, Jim Crow, War on Drugs, etc, will have either specifically targeted black Americans, or disproportionately had a negative impact on them. That negative impact will have manifested in specific problems, like low intergenerational wealth. So if red-lining, for example, resulted in less black Americans whose parents were able to establish a lineage of intergenerational wealth, and were therefore less likely to be able to buy a house themselves, the problem still doesn't need to be framed in terms of race. The government was absolutely wrong to have a policy in place which discriminated on the basis of race, but again, the problem can be entirely addressed by going after the specific problem. If 10 black people are unable to buy homes because of red-lining, 1 Asian is unable to buy a home because they were an asylum seeker that came to the country with nothing, 1 white person is unable to buy a home because they were born to a single parent who is addicted to drugs, and 1 Latino is unable to buy a home because they started their education speaking English as a second language and struggled through school...I don't actually care what put them in that position. But if you come up with a program that indiscriminately assists people in being first-time homeowners, the black people in this hypothetical become the primary beneficiaries of the color-blind policy. To say, "well, sorry Asian person, but less things were done to historically marginalize people that look like you than were done to the people that look like them, so we're not going to help you," is a horrible policy. It has all of the same pitfalls as any other racist policy. And the color-blind solution not only undoes the negative impact of redlining by helping the people who were impacted by it, but if you are actually concerned with racial retributive justice (which you shouldn't be), it is also allocating a disproportionate amount of resources in order to help the victims of that racial policy. So the government pays for its mistakes either way, but this way it does it without continuing to legitimize the concept of race, and without the massive imprecision that arises from using race as a proxy. There is no legitimate reason for any decision to be made on the basis of race, period.