3 ms·

Structural racism is a vague idea that's used as a boogeyman to support race essentialist policies. As far as I know, no evidence has been provided for "structu

Structural racism is a vague idea that's used as a boogeyman to support race essentialist policies. As far as I know, no evidence has been provided for "structural racism" in the sciences yet, it's simply assumed to be true. That's not to say that there aren't any racists in this field. But if you can't properly define "structural racism" and provide any reliable evidence for it, you can perpetually push this narrative and shift your goal posts as you please. This comes at the expense of true inquiry and progress. I'm not sure if the implementation of such equity based policies imply a real demand for it from constituents. In fact, a recent poll showed that the majority of americans wouldn't want race as a factor in university admissions[0]. On the other hand, such policies are supported by the humanities and social sciences, premised on questionable foundations[1]. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americans-say-colleges-should-not-consider-race-or-ethnicity-in-admissions/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/idea-laundering-in-academia-11574634492 https://www.wsj.com/articles/idea-laundering-in-academia-115...

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Structural racism is a vague idea No, its not, though like any term that enters wide use there is lots of sloppy use (and like most terms that are important in politically-charged debates, a substantial portion of that sloppy use is deliberate and designed to undermine the concept.) > to support race essentialist policies. It is usually used, in the context of policy advocacy (it is used extensively outside that context, with the same meaning) in advocating policies which are contingent on current material conditions (which may be directly race-blind or race-conscious), rather than race-essentialist. (In fact, to describe the policies as race-essentialist is to impute the present difference in material conditions that structural racism attributes to socio-legal structures as instead being an inherent product of race, which is itself race-essentialist and, given the nature of the material difference, racist in the individual rather than structural sense.)
- peanutcrisis 4y ago
  Please provide a definition for the term. From reading the positions on various advocates of this term, the use is indeed sloppy and often asserted without evidence. I do not understand your second paragraph, could you elaborately more concisely please?
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Please provide a definition for the term. The totality of mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice which reinforce racially/ethnically [0] discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources. [1] > I do not understand your second paragraph, could you elaborately more concisely please? “Race essentialism” is the belief that races are clearly genetically distinct groups with fundamental and essentially immutable differences in capacities between groups that are more significant than the differences within groups, such that (among other things) differences in outcomes under fair treatment between races are immutable. “Structural racism” is typically part of the argument for policies that address current unequal conditions that are reinforced by existing structures, particularly by removing those structures. It is, in a way, the polar opposite of race essentialism, and the strong reaction against it by active racists is because it both provides an alternative explanation to race essentialism as to why outcomes in a system without overt, direct discrimination, particularly one which had such discrimination in the past, could systematically and persistently differ by race that does not rely on race essentialism and a direction as to how to correct that. [0] consistent with the more general use of “racism” to describe discrimination and bigotry by either what is conventionally described as “race” or “ethnicity”, the distinction of which is artificial and itself, in origin, a product of race essentialist ideologies. [1] This definition is a slight rephrasing (to serve more as a definition than a description) from Bailey ZD, Krieger N, Agénor M, et al. “Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions.” Lancet. 2017;389(10077):1453–1463.
whitemary 4y ago
The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. And it works for historical and material reasons. It is not causal but correlational. Nonetheless, it works so the institution does it. As a result, the structure of the police department is racist. That said, this original definition has been completely ignored and void by the woke types and the terminology now has no coherent meaning at all.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. On the one hand, if that description were accurate, that would be institutional racism, which is not “the original definition of structural racism”, structural racism is about the interaction between elements of society and between racism at all three (institutional, personally mediated, and internalized) [0] levels. On the other hand, the description is not accurate, and racial profiling as a phenomenon is actually a very good place to talk about structural racism, because what is superficially boring institutional racism (and, to be clear, it is institutional racism on top of whatever else it is) is, when you look into the arguments for it even a little, colored rather extraordinarily by personally mediated racism (the kind of active racism that is thought of when the term is used without qualifiers), including racist priors leading to treating statistics drawn from the output of criminal justice processes involving all three kinds of racism (including racial profiling itself) as being race-blind. It’s literally “people of X race are more likely to be identified as perpetrators of crime under status quo systems, so in seeking to identify perpetrators of crime, we should focus on people of race X.” [0] “institutional racism” and the three-fold distinction between institutional, personally mediated, and internalized racism is originally from Jones CP. “Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale”. Am J Public Health. 2000;90(8):1212–1215.
  - whitemary 4y ago
    I don't care whether or not the example also qualifies as "institutional racism" or how many obscure academic texts you cite. The institution is only one small part of the power structures that enforce the resulting behavior. In Frankfurt School critical theory, the largest structures in this case would be capitalism and the capitalist state (monopoly on violence). Of course, the state dictates the priorities of its institutions.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Structural racism is a vague idea No, its not, though like any term that enters wide use there is lots of sloppy use (and like most terms that are important in politically-charged debates, a substantial portion of that sloppy use is deliberate and designed to undermine the concept.) > to support race essentialist policies. It is usually used, in the context of policy advocacy (it is used extensively outside that context, with the same meaning) in advocating policies which are contingent on current material conditions (which may be directly race-blind or race-conscious), rather than race-essentialist. (In fact, to describe the policies as race-essentialist is to impute the present difference in material conditions that structural racism attributes to socio-legal structures as instead being an inherent product of race, which is itself race-essentialist and, given the nature of the material difference, racist in the individual rather than structural sense.)

peanutcrisis 4y ago
Please provide a definition for the term. From reading the positions on various advocates of this term, the use is indeed sloppy and often asserted without evidence. I do not understand your second paragraph, could you elaborately more concisely please?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Please provide a definition for the term. The totality of mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice which reinforce racially/ethnically [0] discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources. [1] > I do not understand your second paragraph, could you elaborately more concisely please? “Race essentialism” is the belief that races are clearly genetically distinct groups with fundamental and essentially immutable differences in capacities between groups that are more significant than the differences within groups, such that (among other things) differences in outcomes under fair treatment between races are immutable. “Structural racism” is typically part of the argument for policies that address current unequal conditions that are reinforced by existing structures, particularly by removing those structures. It is, in a way, the polar opposite of race essentialism, and the strong reaction against it by active racists is because it both provides an alternative explanation to race essentialism as to why outcomes in a system without overt, direct discrimination, particularly one which had such discrimination in the past, could systematically and persistently differ by race that does not rely on race essentialism and a direction as to how to correct that. [0] consistent with the more general use of “racism” to describe discrimination and bigotry by either what is conventionally described as “race” or “ethnicity”, the distinction of which is artificial and itself, in origin, a product of race essentialist ideologies. [1] This definition is a slight rephrasing (to serve more as a definition than a description) from Bailey ZD, Krieger N, Agénor M, et al. “Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions.” Lancet. 2017;389(10077):1453–1463.

whitemary 4y ago

The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. And it works for historical and material reasons. It is not causal but correlational. Nonetheless, it works so the institution does it. As a result, the structure of the police department is racist. That said, this original definition has been completely ignored and void by the woke types and the terminology now has no coherent meaning at all.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. On the one hand, if that description were accurate, that would be institutional racism, which is not “the original definition of structural racism”, structural racism is about the interaction between elements of society and between racism at all three (institutional, personally mediated, and internalized) [0] levels. On the other hand, the description is not accurate, and racial profiling as a phenomenon is actually a very good place to talk about structural racism, because what is superficially boring institutional racism (and, to be clear, it is institutional racism on top of whatever else it is) is, when you look into the arguments for it even a little, colored rather extraordinarily by personally mediated racism (the kind of active racism that is thought of when the term is used without qualifiers), including racist priors leading to treating statistics drawn from the output of criminal justice processes involving all three kinds of racism (including racial profiling itself) as being race-blind. It’s literally “people of X race are more likely to be identified as perpetrators of crime under status quo systems, so in seeking to identify perpetrators of crime, we should focus on people of race X.” [0] “institutional racism” and the three-fold distinction between institutional, personally mediated, and internalized racism is originally from Jones CP. “Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale”. Am J Public Health. 2000;90(8):1212–1215.
- whitemary 4y ago
  I don't care whether or not the example also qualifies as "institutional racism" or how many obscure academic texts you cite. The institution is only one small part of the power structures that enforce the resulting behavior. In Frankfurt School critical theory, the largest structures in this case would be capitalism and the capitalist state (monopoly on violence). Of course, the state dictates the priorities of its institutions.