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From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race. To start with, it's hard to define precisely. It also seems

From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race. To start with, it's hard to define precisely. It also seems to be at odds with the idea of individual responsibility, and individual identity. Just let young people, who have not yet formed their identities, apply. And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of. There's also a very superficial idea of diversity presented. Is your university really going to be diverse from simply having people with different skin color? Having varying skin tones does not tell you for instance whether all the institution's students are wealthy or poor. Or if they grew up in the same place. Or have the same attitudes, which I suppose is the real diversity that you want to have. As for lying about it, you can't really be surprised. If there's no checking, and people think ticking one box puts them at an advantage, why wouldn't they? Surely many of them have a similar attitude to race as what I'm writing, and why would you set yourself backward unjustly?

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep.. a white person from washington, white person from italy and white person from belarus are more diverse than black, latino, asian and white persons from chicago. But it's $current_year, and race suddenly matters.
- mk81 5y ago
  It is currentYear and overt racism is fine now as long as the discrimination is directed at white folks (or Asians in an academic context).
- enumjorge 5y ago
  > But it's $current_year, and race suddenly matters. What is with the terrible discussion happening on this thread? There are black people alive in the US today who in their lifetime could not use the same bathroom or schools as white people. In what world did race not “matter” until now?
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    It started to matter less and less and some people were convinced we should strongly hit the brakes on that because they believed they know better and non-falsifiable unconscious bias is the reason people won't intermix. There is just as much scientific rigor behind such statements as there is behind horoscopes, but it still became public policy and has a huge negative effect because it disunites people.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Yes... there was segregation... then things started to normalize, and race didn't matter anymore (atleast not as much). Instead of going further, and making race irrelevant in everything, things turned around, and we gained back new segregation, with PoC only places and events, even graduations ( https://hsdm.harvard.edu/event/harvard-black-and-latinx-graduation-ceremonies https://hsdm.harvard.edu/event/harvard-black-and-latinx-grad... ) and "white people need not apply" at taxpayer paid jobs ( https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1452228/bbc-job-advert-bans-white-people-bame-ethnic-minorities-uk-media-jobs https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1452228/bbc-job-advert-ban... ).
- prions 5y ago
  Look at some objective measurements segmented by race, such as earnings or life expectancy, and revisit whether you think race has "suddenly" mattered
duxup 5y ago
>And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of. I suspect one of the results of that is a given race who outside this selection process are disadvantaged will be accepted at a low rate.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Yes. And that matters if you believe in race as a diversity criterion, and an important thing to keep similar to the rest of society. You will also find that the representation of Manchester United fans vs Liverpool or Chelsea fans will not be representative of the general population. For instance somehow my friends from the subcontinent seem to all be Liverpool fans. But what is important is that people who want to do something are not discouraged on the basis of things that don't matter directly. For instance I studied engineering, and there were maybe a couple dozen women out of 150. What matters is not that half of people are women, but that whatever women want to come are allowed to do so, and not told that they can't because they're women. Do we want a society where we cut down the number of male engineering students to match the number of women? Or where we allow women into the course who didn't pass the same standard? I think this ratio-matching or whatever you want to call it is poisonous. It actually creates a less diverse society when you try to distribute everyone proportionally to their characteristics, rather than letting them try whatever they feel like.
  - mk81 5y ago
    >Do we want a society where we cut down the number of male engineering students to match the number of women? Or where we allow women into the course who didn't pass the same standard? This is precisely what they want.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      "We" who? I'm pretty sure it's not what I want...
  - duxup 5y ago
    I can't speak for the universities or such. I have no plans for solving this issue with a magic wand. But people think race is real, they treat people of different races differently, people of those races think of themselves as that race, or gender, or etc. That's a real measurable thing. I think the social issues of a given race struggling largely as a whole is also real and have real effects on everyone, I don't oppose efforts to address it. I don't fully understand your last line but admittedly I'm personally less concerned with "diverse" as I am addressing social groups that have cycles of poverty and other issues.
sumedh 5y ago
> And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of. That sounds good on paper but in reality some groups of people have been left behind because of systematic racism. So you give special benefits to individuals from that group then that person becomes a role model for others in his/her group and can help them.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think the perspective that a role model has to be from your ethnicity or needs to look like you is not correct. Especially for young kids. Not from the US but I believe the current disadvantages are still felt because the civil rights movement wasn't that long ago. Such inequality takes decades to vanish, IF policies actually do address inequality at all. Currently most countries face an increase in inequality. You can fight fire with fire, but I don't think this applies to racism for numerous other reasons. Such policies even underline an alleged difference between black and white people.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > I think the perspective that a role model has to be from your ethnicity or needs to look like you is not correct What makes you say that?
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      If I look up to someone because I like the music, art or their general achievements, I don't care much how they look like or more specifically that they are similar to me. On the contrary, it may be advantageous to see people your are on the line with that are completely different to you. Good lesson on how looks can be deceiving.
      - sumedh 5y ago
        > If I look up to someone Exactly and some others are different they look up to people who are the same race or speak the same language etc.
hh3k0 5y ago
> It also seems to be at odds with the idea of individual responsibility […] That's a nice myth but social and economic status are related to race and the game is rigged against some. You can throw terms like "individual responsibility" around all you want and maybe you even start believing that some people just deserve to be in the place they are in… truth is, however, some never had enough chances that individual responsibility would've made a difference.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  True but I put it there because Americans seem fond of it, not because I think the playing field is level.
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
On average, black kids in America get treated worse by our schools, their parents have a harder time getting loans, including mortgages, are far less likely to have attended university themselves, are more likely to be harassed, abused by the police, are more likely to be arrested, more liklely to get prison sentences for the same crimes, etc. It's not a level playing field, at all. Over generations, these differences add up like interest on a mortgage.
- greenail 5y ago
  'All current performance gaps show "racism," if you just redefine racism to mean "current performance gaps."' -Wilfred Reilly
- hawk_ 5y ago
  all of that should reflect in economic indicators of parents and their say marital status/history etc... - you shouldn't need an imprecise proxy like race to level the playing field.
  - CapitalistCartr 5y ago
    Race isn't a proxy, Marital status is. Race(ism) is the root problem. Even the kids of middle class and wealthy blacks suffer the same abuse by the white system.
    - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
      > Racism is the root problem. Is this a falsifiable hypothesis, or is it akin to Russel's teapot? In order to be meaningful, a statement must be falsifiable: What experiment could convince you that racism is not a root cause? I ask because it seems like whenever there is a racially polarized disparity in outcomes it is blamed on racism, no matter the polarity of the disparity, no matter whether race is really needed as part of the mechanism that creates the racial disparity. For example, gentrification in the United States is often attributed to systemic racism. However, despite only having one significant race, Korea and Japan also exhibit cycles of gentrification which harm the economic underclasses, completely independent of a "white system". So, have you looked at all the other potential root causes and ruled them out?
crate_barre 5y ago
Race is one of the foundations of the American experiment, we refer to it as the ‘original sin’ (slavery). We never did anything about it until the Civil War, and then again with Civil Rights. It still lingered, as black/white were bisected in society. Then further subdivisions amongst other races. It’s part of our dilemma, we’ve been circling this problem since the beginning of the country. America in general really struggles with the impulse to gate-keep opportunity. It’s true, America has the most opportunities in the world, but the natural human impulse to gate-keep kicks in. It can happen with race (‘we don’t want too many of ______ in our neighborhoods), it can happen with immigration (‘we don’t want too many _______ in this country), it can happen with class (‘Not everyone deserves what we deserve’), and so on. My fear is the solution is still drenched in the same gate-keeping. The solution is not to gate-keep back the other way (‘they excluded us, so let’s now exclude them’). Same problem. The investment portfolio rebalancing strategy doesn’t sit well with me. Life is not a weighted ETF where you can just go ‘divert the 50% of funds from commodities into a new distribution of 10/10/10/10/10 of crypto, gold, treasuries, etc). Americans have a virtualization problem. Most Americans see that their country is diverse on TV and the Internet, but in their day to day, they really don’t intermix. Even if we do intermix, it’s still generally virtualized in such a way you only see them, like on TV or on the Internet. It’s even worse in non-major cities. It’s easy for most Americans to fool themselves into thinking they are open-minded, but it’s a whole different thing being comfortable watching another race on YouTube, than sharing a neighborhood with them. I’ve mixed two different views here, apologies, but it’s a convoluted problem in America. It should be out of our minds by now, yet it isn’t. It’s so bad (or has been so bad) that we are literally setting race/gender quotas at this point, truly sad state of affairs. ————- Edit: I just want to add a small anecdote on how disconnected the discussion about this is. Usually we try to offer a chance to people who come from underprivileged backgrounds. This discussion usually falls on deaf ears because many Americans cannot fathom what it was like to go to an inner-city public school. They can’t imagine (no experience) what it’s like to sit next to classmates in the 12th grade who read at a 4th grade reading level (but are on track to graduate high school, already accepted to a college - have fun reading Nabakov and Dostoyevsky). If you can’t imagine that, then of course the discussion is a non-starter and will sound completely unfair. I’ve sat in those classrooms and all I could think was ‘holy shit you are gonna need all the help you can get’. So, when I say the ‘portfolio rebalancing’ strategy doesn’t make sense, I mean it. It might make us feel better, make us feel fairer, but many people are not ready to just be thrown into these buckets of equity. The true solution requires work, not just quota-filling. It’s just a country full of a bunch of entry-level inexperienced citizens. Neither side has exposure to the other side. We lack general wisdom.
Nesco 5y ago
As a fellow European, I globally agree with you on this matter. However I think some of your assertions are weakening your post. First things first > why the US even recognises such a thing as race. To start with, it’s hard to define precisely. Well this argument is pretty disturbing… besides the tiny and very neat island of abstract and platonic constructs every concepts about the real world are fuzzy. If someone followed your idea completely he could not use such concepts as “green” or “blue”, or even more relevantly, such an argument could also be applied to the concept of “species”. > is your university really going to be diverse from simply having people with different skin color I also find this assertion… strange to say the least. The clusters known as “races” cover phenotypical differences that are far wider than just “a different skin tone”. A black albino has a white skin, however no one will ever call him white. I am pretty sure that you could yourself instantly tell apart a black albino from a white just using unconsciously the craniofacial differences. It has also been argued that some of those biological differences could lead to behavioural differences and so give rise to another “default” mental representation of the world. So, even if two students come from the same cultural background, one could argue that their ethno-racial differences help to bring different points of views. Even if I agree with you on the argument of fairness, the previous points are not at all effective counter-arguments against racial quotas.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > I am pretty sure that you could yourself instantly tell apart a black albinos from a white just using the craniofacial differences. You can. This is called anthropometry. Many measurements are highly correlated with race. Widely used in all sorts of situations. For example, in legal medicine it helps to identify bodies.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  > Well this argument is pretty disturbing… besides the tiny and very neat island of abstract and platonic constructs every concepts about the real world are fuzzy. If someone followed your idea completely he could not use such concepts as “green” or “blue”, or even more relevantly, such an argument can also be applied to the concept of “species”. What's so disturbing about that? Species are also on a continuum. I think there's a popsci piece about certain lizards in California that inhabit a horseshoe shaped habitat. If your abstraction is wrong, change your abstraction. > I also find this assertion… strange to say the least. Historically people have had horrible things happen to them due to what race they were classified in. Now let's use those classifications to create a diverse campus, thus ensuring the continuation of the racial classification system? If you want a bunch of people who think differently, and you're a university, there should be a more direct way to do this than using some classifier that's both biased and has negative historical connotations. Here's a couple of ways: interview the students to assess their thinking. You're a university right? The kind of place where thinking people go to practice thinking. Number two is a lottery. You want a representative sample? There you go. > ...some of those biological differences could lead to behavioural differences... If I want basketball players, should I recruit in the Netherlands, where people are really tall, or should I just recruit people who are good at basketball?
thrill 5y ago
"From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race." From the inside, too. But even our Supreme Court refused to do the right and Constitutional thing when it came to race admissions criteria, the cowards.
da_chicken 5y ago
> From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race. I work for a public K-12. We're required to ask students to identify their ethnicity at enrollment. If a student refuses to identify a race, we're required to enter something. The direction we've gotten is, "look at the student and guess". That sounds ridiculous, until you remember that real people identify minorities 100% by looking at them and guessing. In a very real sense, you are the race you appear to be to a bigot when it comes to discrimination. However, we're also not allowed to question a reported ethnicity. That's because even if you look white, if you have black ancestors you're still likely to have worse outcomes simply because your ancestors endured racial discrimination. Now, the only reason we collect ethnicity is so that it can be used for reports to USED's Office of Civil Rights. It's used to document that the educational outcomes for students are as equal or equitable as possible. It's used to show that there is as little racial discrimination built into the structure of public education as possible. That is the sole purpose we use it for. We report it to state and federal agencies, and they use it for basically the same. They use it to identify where racial discrimination is taking place. The reason we do that is because racism and racial discrimination is alive and well. Bear in mind, too, that there are public school districts in essentially every state in the US under desegregation orders right now. It's not just a problem of individual racism, but structural and institutional racism as well. It extends the whole gamut from petty teasing in grade school to genocide. It appears to impact everything from academic achievement to job earnings to healthcare outcomes to life expectancy to risk of being a victim of a crime to likelihood of home ownership to incarceration rates. It is a deep and clearly systemic issue, and if you think it doesn't exist in your nation it's because you're not actually looking. If you weren't paying attention over the past several years the far right has a lot of followers, and it's not just in the United States. Britain's brexit and Europe's response to the Syrian refugee crisis are also examples of ongoing racial discrimination. This is a global problem with real, measurable, ongoing effects. Right now as we speak people are being killed simply because they belong to a different race or culture. Why does the US care about race? Because bigots do, and minority xenophobia is one of the foremost causes of violence, civil war, and state-sponsored violence against their own citizenry in the world today. It's the metric that the enemy uses. Why wouldn't you want to pay attention to it? Frankly, I think it's shocking that Europe ignores such a blatant and informative metric. You look like you've got your head in the sand.
gilbetron 5y ago
It isn't that race just started mattering, it is that it has always mattered in the US - pitting "races" against each other was a primary means of control of the colonies, and slavery was a massive part of that. That intense racism built up institutions and systems that have race at their core. You can't just say, "well, race doesn't matter anymore" and expect things to suddenly change. You need to change the systems, and to change the systems you have to recognize that race was used in the creation of them, and so you need to use the lens of race to understand how they are discriminatory so you can fix them.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  But you are pitting races against each other if you prefer one in hiring. You would also need to define a goal to justify discrimination, where I don't believe a feasible reason can exist. So technically, you are the racist if you support such policies.
  - gilbetron 5y ago
    You need discrimination to end discrimination. If you and I are in a race, and I'm 100 laps ahead because I've been cheating and your pit crew gives you worse tires than me, you can't just fix the tires and pretend the race is fair. There needs to be an adjustment, but only a temporary adjustment, to make things fair again. That's the whole point. You can't just say, "ok, race doesn't matter anymore" and expect things to just be fine. The discriminatory systems will not fix themselves.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      > You need discrimination to end discrimination That is a false or at least unproved statement. > only a temporary adjustment, to make things fair again On the shoulders of innocents because they are associated by skin color to a group. We have to disagree here, I believe this is a completely wrong approach. It has been implemented a long while now and it is actually surprising it didn't have a larger net negative effect. So to what degree is it temporary? To me this is overlooking some of the most basic principles that lead to racism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics Interesting read, but it is pretty much deprecated by modern ethical considerations. But that is basically the proposal here. Laws for equal and unequal people.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Or have the same attitudes, which I suppose is the real diversity that you want to have. I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but this one bit is completely untrue. I have yet to see one American institution that welcomes people with different attitudes. The required attitude is pretty clearly defined and even having a discussion about it is not welcome.
1ibsq 5y ago
I see a lot of similarities to the discussion we have in most (?) European countries about the share of women in leading positions. We as well have programs that prefer women over men when applying to key positions to counter steer inequality. Not to say that this practice isn't a hot topic here, but something very similar exists in EU as well. So I can in fact understand why they 'recognize such a thing as race' (same as we recognize such a thing as sex).

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Yep.. a white person from washington, white person from italy and white person from belarus are more diverse than black, latino, asian and white persons from chicago. But it's $current_year, and race suddenly matters.

mk81 5y ago
It is currentYear and overt racism is fine now as long as the discrimination is directed at white folks (or Asians in an academic context).
enumjorge 5y ago
> But it's $current_year, and race suddenly matters. What is with the terrible discussion happening on this thread? There are black people alive in the US today who in their lifetime could not use the same bathroom or schools as white people. In what world did race not “matter” until now?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It started to matter less and less and some people were convinced we should strongly hit the brakes on that because they believed they know better and non-falsifiable unconscious bias is the reason people won't intermix. There is just as much scientific rigor behind such statements as there is behind horoscopes, but it still became public policy and has a huge negative effect because it disunites people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yes... there was segregation... then things started to normalize, and race didn't matter anymore (atleast not as much). Instead of going further, and making race irrelevant in everything, things turned around, and we gained back new segregation, with PoC only places and events, even graduations ( https://hsdm.harvard.edu/event/harvard-black-and-latinx-graduation-ceremonies https://hsdm.harvard.edu/event/harvard-black-and-latinx-grad... ) and "white people need not apply" at taxpayer paid jobs ( https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1452228/bbc-job-advert-bans-white-people-bame-ethnic-minorities-uk-media-jobs https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1452228/bbc-job-advert-ban... ).
prions 5y ago
Look at some objective measurements segmented by race, such as earnings or life expectancy, and revisit whether you think race has "suddenly" mattered

duxup 5y ago

>And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of. I suspect one of the results of that is a given race who outside this selection process are disadvantaged will be accepted at a low rate.

lordnacho 5y ago
Yes. And that matters if you believe in race as a diversity criterion, and an important thing to keep similar to the rest of society. You will also find that the representation of Manchester United fans vs Liverpool or Chelsea fans will not be representative of the general population. For instance somehow my friends from the subcontinent seem to all be Liverpool fans. But what is important is that people who want to do something are not discouraged on the basis of things that don't matter directly. For instance I studied engineering, and there were maybe a couple dozen women out of 150. What matters is not that half of people are women, but that whatever women want to come are allowed to do so, and not told that they can't because they're women. Do we want a society where we cut down the number of male engineering students to match the number of women? Or where we allow women into the course who didn't pass the same standard? I think this ratio-matching or whatever you want to call it is poisonous. It actually creates a less diverse society when you try to distribute everyone proportionally to their characteristics, rather than letting them try whatever they feel like.
- mk81 5y ago
  >Do we want a society where we cut down the number of male engineering students to match the number of women? Or where we allow women into the course who didn't pass the same standard? This is precisely what they want.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    "We" who? I'm pretty sure it's not what I want...
- duxup 5y ago
  I can't speak for the universities or such. I have no plans for solving this issue with a magic wand. But people think race is real, they treat people of different races differently, people of those races think of themselves as that race, or gender, or etc. That's a real measurable thing. I think the social issues of a given race struggling largely as a whole is also real and have real effects on everyone, I don't oppose efforts to address it. I don't fully understand your last line but admittedly I'm personally less concerned with "diverse" as I am addressing social groups that have cycles of poverty and other issues.

sumedh 5y ago

> And judge them by individual criteria, not what groups they happen to be part of. That sounds good on paper but in reality some groups of people have been left behind because of systematic racism. So you give special benefits to individuals from that group then that person becomes a role model for others in his/her group and can help them.

raxxorrax 5y ago
I think the perspective that a role model has to be from your ethnicity or needs to look like you is not correct. Especially for young kids. Not from the US but I believe the current disadvantages are still felt because the civil rights movement wasn't that long ago. Such inequality takes decades to vanish, IF policies actually do address inequality at all. Currently most countries face an increase in inequality. You can fight fire with fire, but I don't think this applies to racism for numerous other reasons. Such policies even underline an alleged difference between black and white people.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > I think the perspective that a role model has to be from your ethnicity or needs to look like you is not correct What makes you say that?
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    If I look up to someone because I like the music, art or their general achievements, I don't care much how they look like or more specifically that they are similar to me. On the contrary, it may be advantageous to see people your are on the line with that are completely different to you. Good lesson on how looks can be deceiving.
    - sumedh 5y ago
      > If I look up to someone Exactly and some others are different they look up to people who are the same race or speak the same language etc.

hh3k0 5y ago

> It also seems to be at odds with the idea of individual responsibility […] That's a nice myth but social and economic status are related to race and the game is rigged against some. You can throw terms like "individual responsibility" around all you want and maybe you even start believing that some people just deserve to be in the place they are in… truth is, however, some never had enough chances that individual responsibility would've made a difference.

lordnacho 5y ago
True but I put it there because Americans seem fond of it, not because I think the playing field is level.

CapitalistCartr 5y ago

On average, black kids in America get treated worse by our schools, their parents have a harder time getting loans, including mortgages, are far less likely to have attended university themselves, are more likely to be harassed, abused by the police, are more likely to be arrested, more liklely to get prison sentences for the same crimes, etc. It's not a level playing field, at all. Over generations, these differences add up like interest on a mortgage.

greenail 5y ago
'All current performance gaps show "racism," if you just redefine racism to mean "current performance gaps."' -Wilfred Reilly
hawk_ 5y ago
all of that should reflect in economic indicators of parents and their say marital status/history etc... - you shouldn't need an imprecise proxy like race to level the playing field.
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  Race isn't a proxy, Marital status is. Race(ism) is the root problem. Even the kids of middle class and wealthy blacks suffer the same abuse by the white system.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    > Racism is the root problem. Is this a falsifiable hypothesis, or is it akin to Russel's teapot? In order to be meaningful, a statement must be falsifiable: What experiment could convince you that racism is not a root cause? I ask because it seems like whenever there is a racially polarized disparity in outcomes it is blamed on racism, no matter the polarity of the disparity, no matter whether race is really needed as part of the mechanism that creates the racial disparity. For example, gentrification in the United States is often attributed to systemic racism. However, despite only having one significant race, Korea and Japan also exhibit cycles of gentrification which harm the economic underclasses, completely independent of a "white system". So, have you looked at all the other potential root causes and ruled them out?

crate_barre 5y ago

Race is one of the foundations of the American experiment, we refer to it as the ‘original sin’ (slavery). We never did anything about it until the Civil War, and then again with Civil Rights. It still lingered, as black/white were bisected in society. Then further subdivisions amongst other races. It’s part of our dilemma, we’ve been circling this problem since the beginning of the country. America in general really struggles with the impulse to gate-keep opportunity. It’s true, America has the most opportunities in the world, but the natural human impulse to gate-keep kicks in. It can happen with race (‘we don’t want too many of ______ in our neighborhoods), it can happen with immigration (‘we don’t want too many _______ in this country), it can happen with class (‘Not everyone deserves what we deserve’), and so on. My fear is the solution is still drenched in the same gate-keeping. The solution is not to gate-keep back the other way (‘they excluded us, so let’s now exclude them’). Same problem. The investment portfolio rebalancing strategy doesn’t sit well with me. Life is not a weighted ETF where you can just go ‘divert the 50% of funds from commodities into a new distribution of 10/10/10/10/10 of crypto, gold, treasuries, etc). Americans have a virtualization problem. Most Americans see that their country is diverse on TV and the Internet, but in their day to day, they really don’t intermix. Even if we do intermix, it’s still generally virtualized in such a way you only see them, like on TV or on the Internet. It’s even worse in non-major cities. It’s easy for most Americans to fool themselves into thinking they are open-minded, but it’s a whole different thing being comfortable watching another race on YouTube, than sharing a neighborhood with them. I’ve mixed two different views here, apologies, but it’s a convoluted problem in America. It should be out of our minds by now, yet it isn’t. It’s so bad (or has been so bad) that we are literally setting race/gender quotas at this point, truly sad state of affairs. ————- Edit: I just want to add a small anecdote on how disconnected the discussion about this is. Usually we try to offer a chance to people who come from underprivileged backgrounds. This discussion usually falls on deaf ears because many Americans cannot fathom what it was like to go to an inner-city public school. They can’t imagine (no experience) what it’s like to sit next to classmates in the 12th grade who read at a 4th grade reading level (but are on track to graduate high school, already accepted to a college - have fun reading Nabakov and Dostoyevsky). If you can’t imagine that, then of course the discussion is a non-starter and will sound completely unfair. I’ve sat in those classrooms and all I could think was ‘holy shit you are gonna need all the help you can get’. So, when I say the ‘portfolio rebalancing’ strategy doesn’t make sense, I mean it. It might make us feel better, make us feel fairer, but many people are not ready to just be thrown into these buckets of equity. The true solution requires work, not just quota-filling. It’s just a country full of a bunch of entry-level inexperienced citizens. Neither side has exposure to the other side. We lack general wisdom.

Nesco 5y ago

As a fellow European, I globally agree with you on this matter. However I think some of your assertions are weakening your post. First things first > why the US even recognises such a thing as race. To start with, it’s hard to define precisely. Well this argument is pretty disturbing… besides the tiny and very neat island of abstract and platonic constructs every concepts about the real world are fuzzy. If someone followed your idea completely he could not use such concepts as “green” or “blue”, or even more relevantly, such an argument could also be applied to the concept of “species”. > is your university really going to be diverse from simply having people with different skin color I also find this assertion… strange to say the least. The clusters known as “races” cover phenotypical differences that are far wider than just “a different skin tone”. A black albino has a white skin, however no one will ever call him white. I am pretty sure that you could yourself instantly tell apart a black albino from a white just using unconsciously the craniofacial differences. It has also been argued that some of those biological differences could lead to behavioural differences and so give rise to another “default” mental representation of the world. So, even if two students come from the same cultural background, one could argue that their ethno-racial differences help to bring different points of views. Even if I agree with you on the argument of fairness, the previous points are not at all effective counter-arguments against racial quotas.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I am pretty sure that you could yourself instantly tell apart a black albinos from a white just using the craniofacial differences. You can. This is called anthropometry. Many measurements are highly correlated with race. Widely used in all sorts of situations. For example, in legal medicine it helps to identify bodies.
lordnacho 5y ago
> Well this argument is pretty disturbing… besides the tiny and very neat island of abstract and platonic constructs every concepts about the real world are fuzzy. If someone followed your idea completely he could not use such concepts as “green” or “blue”, or even more relevantly, such an argument can also be applied to the concept of “species”. What's so disturbing about that? Species are also on a continuum. I think there's a popsci piece about certain lizards in California that inhabit a horseshoe shaped habitat. If your abstraction is wrong, change your abstraction. > I also find this assertion… strange to say the least. Historically people have had horrible things happen to them due to what race they were classified in. Now let's use those classifications to create a diverse campus, thus ensuring the continuation of the racial classification system? If you want a bunch of people who think differently, and you're a university, there should be a more direct way to do this than using some classifier that's both biased and has negative historical connotations. Here's a couple of ways: interview the students to assess their thinking. You're a university right? The kind of place where thinking people go to practice thinking. Number two is a lottery. You want a representative sample? There you go. > ...some of those biological differences could lead to behavioural differences... If I want basketball players, should I recruit in the Netherlands, where people are really tall, or should I just recruit people who are good at basketball?

thrill 5y ago

"From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race." From the inside, too. But even our Supreme Court refused to do the right and Constitutional thing when it came to race admissions criteria, the cowards.

da_chicken 5y ago

> From the outside (Europe) you have to ask yourself why the US even recognizes such a thing as race. I work for a public K-12. We're required to ask students to identify their ethnicity at enrollment. If a student refuses to identify a race, we're required to enter something. The direction we've gotten is, "look at the student and guess". That sounds ridiculous, until you remember that real people identify minorities 100% by looking at them and guessing. In a very real sense, you are the race you appear to be to a bigot when it comes to discrimination. However, we're also not allowed to question a reported ethnicity. That's because even if you look white, if you have black ancestors you're still likely to have worse outcomes simply because your ancestors endured racial discrimination. Now, the only reason we collect ethnicity is so that it can be used for reports to USED's Office of Civil Rights. It's used to document that the educational outcomes for students are as equal or equitable as possible. It's used to show that there is as little racial discrimination built into the structure of public education as possible. That is the sole purpose we use it for. We report it to state and federal agencies, and they use it for basically the same. They use it to identify where racial discrimination is taking place. The reason we do that is because racism and racial discrimination is alive and well. Bear in mind, too, that there are public school districts in essentially every state in the US under desegregation orders right now. It's not just a problem of individual racism, but structural and institutional racism as well. It extends the whole gamut from petty teasing in grade school to genocide. It appears to impact everything from academic achievement to job earnings to healthcare outcomes to life expectancy to risk of being a victim of a crime to likelihood of home ownership to incarceration rates. It is a deep and clearly systemic issue, and if you think it doesn't exist in your nation it's because you're not actually looking. If you weren't paying attention over the past several years the far right has a lot of followers, and it's not just in the United States. Britain's brexit and Europe's response to the Syrian refugee crisis are also examples of ongoing racial discrimination. This is a global problem with real, measurable, ongoing effects. Right now as we speak people are being killed simply because they belong to a different race or culture. Why does the US care about race? Because bigots do, and minority xenophobia is one of the foremost causes of violence, civil war, and state-sponsored violence against their own citizenry in the world today. It's the metric that the enemy uses. Why wouldn't you want to pay attention to it? Frankly, I think it's shocking that Europe ignores such a blatant and informative metric. You look like you've got your head in the sand.

gilbetron 5y ago

It isn't that race just started mattering, it is that it has always mattered in the US - pitting "races" against each other was a primary means of control of the colonies, and slavery was a massive part of that. That intense racism built up institutions and systems that have race at their core. You can't just say, "well, race doesn't matter anymore" and expect things to suddenly change. You need to change the systems, and to change the systems you have to recognize that race was used in the creation of them, and so you need to use the lens of race to understand how they are discriminatory so you can fix them.

raxxorrax 5y ago
But you are pitting races against each other if you prefer one in hiring. You would also need to define a goal to justify discrimination, where I don't believe a feasible reason can exist. So technically, you are the racist if you support such policies.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  You need discrimination to end discrimination. If you and I are in a race, and I'm 100 laps ahead because I've been cheating and your pit crew gives you worse tires than me, you can't just fix the tires and pretend the race is fair. There needs to be an adjustment, but only a temporary adjustment, to make things fair again. That's the whole point. You can't just say, "ok, race doesn't matter anymore" and expect things to just be fine. The discriminatory systems will not fix themselves.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    > You need discrimination to end discrimination That is a false or at least unproved statement. > only a temporary adjustment, to make things fair again On the shoulders of innocents because they are associated by skin color to a group. We have to disagree here, I believe this is a completely wrong approach. It has been implemented a long while now and it is actually surprising it didn't have a larger net negative effect. So to what degree is it temporary? To me this is overlooking some of the most basic principles that lead to racism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics Interesting read, but it is pretty much deprecated by modern ethical considerations. But that is basically the proposal here. Laws for equal and unequal people.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

> Or have the same attitudes, which I suppose is the real diversity that you want to have. I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but this one bit is completely untrue. I have yet to see one American institution that welcomes people with different attitudes. The required attitude is pretty clearly defined and even having a discussion about it is not welcome.

1ibsq 5y ago

I see a lot of similarities to the discussion we have in most (?) European countries about the share of women in leading positions. We as well have programs that prefer women over men when applying to key positions to counter steer inequality. Not to say that this practice isn't a hot topic here, but something very similar exists in EU as well. So I can in fact understand why they 'recognize such a thing as race' (same as we recognize such a thing as sex).