27 ms·

The census exists to inform policy. If there is discrimination based on race, then we're better off measuring it so we can address it than burying our heads in

The census exists to inform policy. If there is discrimination based on race, then we're better off measuring it so we can address it than burying our heads in the sand. Of course, this may lead to targeted policies, just as insulin is applied to people with a diabetes diagnosis, and not to the general population.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> census exists to inform policy Race is a social construct. The census strengthens that construct. OP’s argument is that race should be a weaker construct, which is a legitimate if debatable argument.
- Loughla 5y ago
  Second OP's point is that yes, race is a social construct, with clear and consistent impacts in real people's lives every day. The census exists to measure things that may be used to inform policy. Therefore, something such as race, even if it is an arbitrary social construct used to divide based on nothing more than skin color, is important to measure against other factors such as income and address. It helps you decide when/where/what is being discriminatory. Race should be a weaker social construct, yes. But living in Infinite Fun Space doesn't help anyone today in the real.
  - retrac 5y ago
    As pointed out elsewhere in the comments on this thread, the census may have accidentally ended up enforcing white hegemony in America. See the anecdotes of people suppressing the reporting of partial indigenous or African heritage in order to pass as white. The data made America look far more white than it ever was. And despite the recent trend I doubt the effect has vanished. Are we so sure we want to be using that data for policy?
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Ignoring race doesn’t make it stop being a problem. We tried that from basically the 1980s till the mid-2000s and things really only got worse. Race may have stopped being on the minds of white people, but it is always on the minds of non-white people every time they interact with a white person. Not engaging on racial issues is why we had riots in 2020.
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    If you think things got worse for people since the 1980s, maybe you should start by digging a little deeper into how bad it used to be. And why would you think race has stopped being on the minds of any people? Do you have any evidence of this, because it sure strikes as utterly wrong given the non-stop ongoing national conversation about race.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  I keep expecting (not hopefully) the establishment of "Trans Racial" people, where people want to be recognized as the race they identify as, rather than what they were labeled at birth. The logic is precisely the same as transgenderism. There have been a few cases, with the Rachel Dolezal case of 2015 getting a lot of attention.[1] I wonder if the status that transgenderism has achieved would make such a movement easier. Or, would it discredit such movements and "dysphoria" diagnoses? I mean, if we're going to alter/deny immutable traits, and if race is truly a "social construct", why wouldn't trans-racialism become a thing? [1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-identity/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-r...
  - maxwell_xander 5y ago
    I don't think trends and fashion are that aware of their own transience. For example, the rise of Christianity in a region hardly coincides with the rise of other forms of theism. But why not? If people are willing to believe in one imaginary superbeing, why not others whose logic is precisely the same as Christianity? Yet precisely the opposite happens - the one arbitrary belief is forced to delegitimize similar trends, in order to establish itself as not-just-another-arbitrary-theism. Transgender people have only very recently been given the faintest legitimacy, and they naturally want to defend that against transracialists and otherkin and other movements that basically look like a parody of trans people. Even if their logic isn't fundamentally stronger than those other movements, transgender people have something that actually matters: a little bit of power. Why should anyone sacrifice that to the altar of logic?
merpnderp 5y ago
But even Native American tribes mostly care about people who are culturally present in their tribes as members versus being of Native American race. For example those whose ancestors didn't partake in the Dawes Roles are generally excluded from tribal membership even if they are genetically similar; the reasoning being they haven't been present as citizens in generations. And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history? That's always been a hard question to answer when there's an existing reality and history in which the "should" in your first sentence is replaced by "do". It's easy to say that it would be best to start doing the right thing today (or even yesterday); much harder to do that after centuries of doing the wrong thing.
inglor_cz 5y ago
The comparison to diabetes has one major flaw. You either have or don't have diabetes and the fact that you are tested for it does not change your diabetes status. You can only measure it, but your measurement won't alter the situation. But by constantly reminding people of their racial category, a feedback loop is created. The more are people defined by their race, the more important will they consider their racial category. They will also start viewing more interactions through the race angle, especially the negative ones. Not "the policeman was rude because he is an asshole", but "the policeman was rude because I am of a different race from him". I cannot imagine a scenario where constant race consciousness leads to people being less concerned about anything that can be construed as racially charged.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The goal is, indeed, to make people more concerned about things that can be construed as racially charged, because of the first step to addressing inequity is to identify it. There are very many people who see what are obvious instances of structural racism (including the police interaction example you highlighted) and will fight tooth and claw to assert that no racism was involved. The result is apathy, lack of improvement, and continued racially-charged interactions between police and citizens. Pretending they aren't racially charged doesn't make them go away. Before positive changes can be made, people need to recognize that do-nothing mindset is very common. On this, two days after Martin Luther King Jr Day, it may be value for us all to reflect on his words on the difference between the peace of the absence of tension and the peace of the presence of justice.
  - nescioquid 5y ago
    Identity is a wedge used to split class solidarity (but note the terrific solidarity of the elite class). The best improvements for everyone will come from policies which ignore identity and materially improve the lives of people. The Democratic party has held the belief that demographics will keep them in power without having to actually address economic and legal inequalities, that is, without having to do anything at all. But the middle and lower classes will never find solidarity amongst themselves so long as we are fixated on identity, and nothing will change (that's the point).

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> census exists to inform policy Race is a social construct. The census strengthens that construct. OP’s argument is that race should be a weaker construct, which is a legitimate if debatable argument.

Loughla 5y ago
Second OP's point is that yes, race is a social construct, with clear and consistent impacts in real people's lives every day. The census exists to measure things that may be used to inform policy. Therefore, something such as race, even if it is an arbitrary social construct used to divide based on nothing more than skin color, is important to measure against other factors such as income and address. It helps you decide when/where/what is being discriminatory. Race should be a weaker social construct, yes. But living in Infinite Fun Space doesn't help anyone today in the real.
- retrac 5y ago
  As pointed out elsewhere in the comments on this thread, the census may have accidentally ended up enforcing white hegemony in America. See the anecdotes of people suppressing the reporting of partial indigenous or African heritage in order to pass as white. The data made America look far more white than it ever was. And despite the recent trend I doubt the effect has vanished. Are we so sure we want to be using that data for policy?
wayoutthere 5y ago
Ignoring race doesn’t make it stop being a problem. We tried that from basically the 1980s till the mid-2000s and things really only got worse. Race may have stopped being on the minds of white people, but it is always on the minds of non-white people every time they interact with a white person. Not engaging on racial issues is why we had riots in 2020.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  If you think things got worse for people since the 1980s, maybe you should start by digging a little deeper into how bad it used to be. And why would you think race has stopped being on the minds of any people? Do you have any evidence of this, because it sure strikes as utterly wrong given the non-stop ongoing national conversation about race.
kerneloftruth 5y ago
I keep expecting (not hopefully) the establishment of "Trans Racial" people, where people want to be recognized as the race they identify as, rather than what they were labeled at birth. The logic is precisely the same as transgenderism. There have been a few cases, with the Rachel Dolezal case of 2015 getting a lot of attention.[1] I wonder if the status that transgenderism has achieved would make such a movement easier. Or, would it discredit such movements and "dysphoria" diagnoses? I mean, if we're going to alter/deny immutable traits, and if race is truly a "social construct", why wouldn't trans-racialism become a thing? [1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-identity/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-r...
- maxwell_xander 5y ago
  I don't think trends and fashion are that aware of their own transience. For example, the rise of Christianity in a region hardly coincides with the rise of other forms of theism. But why not? If people are willing to believe in one imaginary superbeing, why not others whose logic is precisely the same as Christianity? Yet precisely the opposite happens - the one arbitrary belief is forced to delegitimize similar trends, in order to establish itself as not-just-another-arbitrary-theism. Transgender people have only very recently been given the faintest legitimacy, and they naturally want to defend that against transracialists and otherkin and other movements that basically look like a parody of trans people. Even if their logic isn't fundamentally stronger than those other movements, transgender people have something that actually matters: a little bit of power. Why should anyone sacrifice that to the altar of logic?

merpnderp 5y ago

But even Native American tribes mostly care about people who are culturally present in their tribes as members versus being of Native American race. For example those whose ancestors didn't partake in the Dawes Roles are generally excluded from tribal membership even if they are genetically similar; the reasoning being they haven't been present as citizens in generations. And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history?

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> And really, what should we care about most? A particular hue of skin, or our values, principles, traditions, and history? That's always been a hard question to answer when there's an existing reality and history in which the "should" in your first sentence is replaced by "do". It's easy to say that it would be best to start doing the right thing today (or even yesterday); much harder to do that after centuries of doing the wrong thing.

inglor_cz 5y ago

The comparison to diabetes has one major flaw. You either have or don't have diabetes and the fact that you are tested for it does not change your diabetes status. You can only measure it, but your measurement won't alter the situation. But by constantly reminding people of their racial category, a feedback loop is created. The more are people defined by their race, the more important will they consider their racial category. They will also start viewing more interactions through the race angle, especially the negative ones. Not "the policeman was rude because he is an asshole", but "the policeman was rude because I am of a different race from him". I cannot imagine a scenario where constant race consciousness leads to people being less concerned about anything that can be construed as racially charged.

shadowgovt 5y ago
The goal is, indeed, to make people more concerned about things that can be construed as racially charged, because of the first step to addressing inequity is to identify it. There are very many people who see what are obvious instances of structural racism (including the police interaction example you highlighted) and will fight tooth and claw to assert that no racism was involved. The result is apathy, lack of improvement, and continued racially-charged interactions between police and citizens. Pretending they aren't racially charged doesn't make them go away. Before positive changes can be made, people need to recognize that do-nothing mindset is very common. On this, two days after Martin Luther King Jr Day, it may be value for us all to reflect on his words on the difference between the peace of the absence of tension and the peace of the presence of justice.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  Identity is a wedge used to split class solidarity (but note the terrific solidarity of the elite class). The best improvements for everyone will come from policies which ignore identity and materially improve the lives of people. The Democratic party has held the belief that demographics will keep them in power without having to actually address economic and legal inequalities, that is, without having to do anything at all. But the middle and lower classes will never find solidarity amongst themselves so long as we are fixated on identity, and nothing will change (that's the point).