4 ms·

Yep. A lot of people who’ve been hurt by racism in the past, engage in loose pattern matching. If the story is a police officer shot a black person, to many it’

Yep. A lot of people who’ve been hurt by racism in the past, engage in loose pattern matching. If the story is a police officer shot a black person, to many it’s automatically racism, despite whatever the facts are. That said, I’m black btw, the problems in the black community are not down to any one thing, but certainly the lack of two parent households is a biggie. I was fortunate to grow up in California with two parents who could afford to send me to a private school. Even absent more government intervention, just having more stable households will do a lot to fix the inequalities.

rebelos 5y ago
You raise a very important point and one that is difficult to discuss. I'm Asian and I grew up with parents who hewed rather closely to Asian culture. There are two values they championed essentially above all others, well known to most: devotion to family and the intense pursuit of academic achievement. I do feel like I've been a direct beneficiary of that cultural impulse. Much like yourself, I did my best to leverage educational opportunities and had the stability of a supportive family. When we talk about culture and the Black community, many people become understandably wary. It's a fine line between invoking culture and being seen to blame Black people for their own problems. Not to mention that, in doing so, it can be easy to lose sight of the richness of Black culture and its extensive contributions to so many aspects of the American experience e.g. in music, sports, entertainment, art, literature, and cuisine. Perhaps a better way to frame it is that when a particular community has suffered so much injustice and attendant compounded stagnation, it's very hard to find an expedient solution to bring that community to parity that doesn't involve constructing fresh and even revolutionary internal narratives around achievement (and not just academic). Without that sort of effort, it might take many more generations for a combination of government intervention and the natural course of progress to fully remedy the imbalance. And there's also the problem of exacerbating racial animus in the course of addressing that imbalance. While I understand the need for it intellectually, I have substantial misgivings about preferential treatment being extended specifically to Black (or Hispanic or Native American) people along racial lines. There is something that feels deeply wrong about attempting to cure racial injustice by inflicting new racial injustices on people whose only fault was being born a particular race at the wrong moment in history, especially when we are purporting to be an enlightened society that has learned its lesson in this regard. The position is unpopular with many here, but it is my opinion that we should not be devising a society that argues that a boy from an underprivileged neighborhood in Philadelphia is more deserving of opportunity than a girl from a disenfranchised part of the Rust Belt because he's Black and she's White. Rather, we should be saying that they are nearly equally in need of help from society because they are both disadvantaged. While this is not perfectly fair insofar as it does not factor in race, I believe it is a policy position that on balance would help the Black people who are most in need of it without leaving anyone of another race feeling as if (s)he's experiencing undue discrimination. Unfortunately I believe that quandary is even more fraught than the issue of police killings and therefore at present resistant to the possibility of honest discourse.
- lvl100 5y ago
  A lot of words to explain away your racism.
  - jelsisi 5y ago
    A pretty poor response to a well written post. I'm skeptical you read through it.
- randomswede 5y ago
  Purely hypothetically, if there are string indications that parental socio-economic status influence the chances of their children. And that socio-economic status is somewhat (to strongly) correlated with previous race-influenced policies, is a generation or two of compensating for that "inflicting racial injustice"? Is a failure to compensate for it not explicitly "continuing racial injustice"? I mean, I literally have no answer. Except, possibly, "yes" and "yes", and "the former is on the whole a lesser evil than the latter"?
  - rebelos 5y ago
    > Purely hypothetically, if there are string indications that parental socio-economic status influence the chances of their children. And that socio-economic status is somewhat (to strongly) correlated with previous race-influenced policies, is a generation or two of compensating for that "inflicting racial injustice"? Is a failure to compensate for it not explicitly "continuing racial injustice"? This makes two assumptions that I would challenge: that affirmative action as it exists at present is benefitting the most socioeconomically vulnerable underrepresented minorities and that the problem you're describing cannot be tackled with race neutral wealth redistribution and other need-aware policymaking. Also, if you want to go down the racial grievance accounting rabbithole, then the Irish, Japanese, Jews, etc would like a word as well. You're be hard-pressed to find a race that doesn't have some such claim.
    - randomswede 5y ago
      I am specifically NOT trying to go down "redress historical grievances", only "try to correct for currently existing imbalances". There's probably also something to be said for having policies trying to get some geographic rebalancing in place as well. But, what I am trying to say is that redressing recent-past wrongs MAY require slight over-compensation. To make anything other than sweeping generalisations, I would need numbers. Oh so many numbers.

rebelos 5y ago

You raise a very important point and one that is difficult to discuss. I'm Asian and I grew up with parents who hewed rather closely to Asian culture. There are two values they championed essentially above all others, well known to most: devotion to family and the intense pursuit of academic achievement. I do feel like I've been a direct beneficiary of that cultural impulse. Much like yourself, I did my best to leverage educational opportunities and had the stability of a supportive family. When we talk about culture and the Black community, many people become understandably wary. It's a fine line between invoking culture and being seen to blame Black people for their own problems. Not to mention that, in doing so, it can be easy to lose sight of the richness of Black culture and its extensive contributions to so many aspects of the American experience e.g. in music, sports, entertainment, art, literature, and cuisine. Perhaps a better way to frame it is that when a particular community has suffered so much injustice and attendant compounded stagnation, it's very hard to find an expedient solution to bring that community to parity that doesn't involve constructing fresh and even revolutionary internal narratives around achievement (and not just academic). Without that sort of effort, it might take many more generations for a combination of government intervention and the natural course of progress to fully remedy the imbalance. And there's also the problem of exacerbating racial animus in the course of addressing that imbalance. While I understand the need for it intellectually, I have substantial misgivings about preferential treatment being extended specifically to Black (or Hispanic or Native American) people along racial lines. There is something that feels deeply wrong about attempting to cure racial injustice by inflicting new racial injustices on people whose only fault was being born a particular race at the wrong moment in history, especially when we are purporting to be an enlightened society that has learned its lesson in this regard. The position is unpopular with many here, but it is my opinion that we should not be devising a society that argues that a boy from an underprivileged neighborhood in Philadelphia is more deserving of opportunity than a girl from a disenfranchised part of the Rust Belt because he's Black and she's White. Rather, we should be saying that they are nearly equally in need of help from society because they are both disadvantaged. While this is not perfectly fair insofar as it does not factor in race, I believe it is a policy position that on balance would help the Black people who are most in need of it without leaving anyone of another race feeling as if (s)he's experiencing undue discrimination. Unfortunately I believe that quandary is even more fraught than the issue of police killings and therefore at present resistant to the possibility of honest discourse.

lvl100 5y ago
A lot of words to explain away your racism.
- jelsisi 5y ago
  A pretty poor response to a well written post. I'm skeptical you read through it.
randomswede 5y ago
Purely hypothetically, if there are string indications that parental socio-economic status influence the chances of their children. And that socio-economic status is somewhat (to strongly) correlated with previous race-influenced policies, is a generation or two of compensating for that "inflicting racial injustice"? Is a failure to compensate for it not explicitly "continuing racial injustice"? I mean, I literally have no answer. Except, possibly, "yes" and "yes", and "the former is on the whole a lesser evil than the latter"?
- rebelos 5y ago
  > Purely hypothetically, if there are string indications that parental socio-economic status influence the chances of their children. And that socio-economic status is somewhat (to strongly) correlated with previous race-influenced policies, is a generation or two of compensating for that "inflicting racial injustice"? Is a failure to compensate for it not explicitly "continuing racial injustice"? This makes two assumptions that I would challenge: that affirmative action as it exists at present is benefitting the most socioeconomically vulnerable underrepresented minorities and that the problem you're describing cannot be tackled with race neutral wealth redistribution and other need-aware policymaking. Also, if you want to go down the racial grievance accounting rabbithole, then the Irish, Japanese, Jews, etc would like a word as well. You're be hard-pressed to find a race that doesn't have some such claim.
  - randomswede 5y ago
    I am specifically NOT trying to go down "redress historical grievances", only "try to correct for currently existing imbalances". There's probably also something to be said for having policies trying to get some geographic rebalancing in place as well. But, what I am trying to say is that redressing recent-past wrongs MAY require slight over-compensation. To make anything other than sweeping generalisations, I would need numbers. Oh so many numbers.