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Again though... this needn't be attributed to racism. It's not like power companies are like "hmm, grid is under strain, guess we better cut black people and la

• corndoge 5y ago
  > Now it makes sense because power companies (which are privatized in Texas) will prioritize their reliable, paying customers over less reliable customers that might miss payments. Not that I necessarily disagree with this but do you have any data to back this claim up?
  • username90 5y ago
    When you have to pay thousands of dollars per mwh it is pretty likely that many in poorer areas wont pay. And yeah, that rate is not impossible in Texas, they even have a law capping how high it can go since it is a problem. Edit: I am pretty sure that many poor homes wouldn't be able to pay a power bill of a few thousand dollars, which is what you'd pay if you have variable rate and ran as normal throughout the texas power crisis.
    • amock 5y ago
      How many people had to pay higher than usual rates? As far as I can tell there were very few people who were on plans that passed those rates down to the consumer and I don't see any reason that poorer areas would have more people on that kind of plan.
• deleted 5y ago
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• wolfram74 5y ago
  This would be an example of systemic or long lasting results of racism. Having less dependable power means your foods more likely to spoil, your work is going to be disrupted, all kinds of things that are comparative disadvantages. And if these communities are artifacts of redlining, then it would be very obvious the clustering had racist origins.
• wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > “Income status of areas did not appear to be a strong factor in the share of blackouts…” the study stated. “The presence of hospitals or police and fire stations—critical facilities—in a CBG [Census block group] reduces the chances of blackouts by around 0%-6%, a small difference that does not otherwise explain the disparity among communities.” from the article
• MR4D 5y ago
  This is incorrect. I live in Houston and am intimately familiar with power in the state. The priorities are (generally speaking) as follows: 1 - Critical infrastructure (hospitals, etc); 2 - Interconnects on the T&D infrastructure; 3 - Population density. This is actually heavily regulated.
• camgunz 5y ago
  The article disambiguates income pretty explicitly.
• alistairSH 5y ago
  this needn't be attributed to racism. I'd clarify this as "needed be attributed to intentional, malicious racism." A system can be racist in terms of outcome without having been intentionally designed to be racist. That still might be a problem. A sibling comment posited low-income areas are both more likely to have monitory residents and older infrastructure. That seems possible. But doesn't make it a non-issue.
  • ARandomerDude 5y ago
    > A system can be racist in terms of outcome without having been intentionally designed to be racist. The problem with this line of thinking is it is so broad in its scope that it could literally be applied to anything where there isn't perfect uniformity of outcome. Just take out race: > A system can be ___ist in terms of outcome without having been intentionally designed to be ___ist. Consider these dubious outcome-based claims: Classist: poor people don't own cargo ships, therefore the shipping industry is classist. Sexist: spas attract more women than men, therefore the spa industry is sexist. Racist: most Ethiopian universities have majority black student populations, therefore most Ethiopian universities are racist. You get the idea. The question when assigning blame for ___ism shouldn't be What is the apparent outcome?, but What is the apparent intent? – and it's only fair to assume good intentions in others until proven otherwise.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • munificent 5y ago
      I think you are talking past each other. Sure, yes, any system may evince disproportionate outcomes for various demographic groups. I think your point is that that variation doesn't matter. In your examples, that is likely the case. But I think implicit in the parent comment is that there are some systems that have demographic variation and where that variation significantly impacts the power, agency, or well-being of one of the groups. And for cases like that, real people are being harmed. They are unfairly not getting the same opportunity for success and liberty that other groups receive. That is a problem that anyone who cares about fairness should care to solve regardless of whether that's the intent of the system. It's not about blaming and shaming the architects of the system. It's simply a matter of something akin to good engineering to want systems that work well for all users. The fact that men don't go to spas as much ultimately doesn't matter. But if black people in Houston disportionately lost power and froze to death that is an entirely different category of problem. We should not equate them.
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  Just to be clear, because I don't think you're making this mistake, but it seems like people replying to you are, this research data is referring to all blackouts nationwide over some study period, not the Texas ten-year storm from a few months ago. When that storm hit, ability to pay meant absolutely nothing. Poor and rich alike all lost power. When the generating stations and lines all freeze, it becomes impossible to get energy out, whether anyone can pay or not. Money doesn't magically make capacity appear when the delivery network itself fails. That was really the downfall of the Texas approach. Naive economics assumes you can deal with shortages by just rationing using price, and higher prices will incentivize producers to produce more. But if the delivery infrastructure stops working, it makes no difference what the producers' incentives are. They can't deliver anything whether they want to or not, no matter what you're willing to pay them.
• deleted 5y ago
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• ohhhhhh 5y ago
  thank you. big problem today is attributing racism in any situation where outcomes are perceived to be different because of weird contextual framing.