4 ms·

I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make

I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make me ashamed to be human.

kalkin 14y ago
Jeez, as far as I can tell the person you're replying to is just defending affirmative action.
- jrogers65 14y ago
  Many people argue that affirmative action is institutionalized racism.
  - kalkin 14y ago
    Many people ... who don't know what institutional racism looks like. (One requirement would probably be that the discriminated-against group actually ends up with worse outcomes. Compare to say, Black people in the criminal justice system.) I mean, seriously, even if you oppose affirmative action, do you really want to say that its advocates are morally equivalent to racial oppressors and make you ashamed of humanity? Martin Luther King, Jr. makes you ashamed of humanity?
    - jrogers65 14y ago
      Perhaps our definitions of institutional racism differ but I'm going by the dictionary definition: >Accepted social arrangements that exclude on the basis of race. Source: http://dictionary.babylon.com/institutional_racism/ http://dictionary.babylon.com/institutional_racism/ As such, affirmative action fits the bill. Martin Luther King Jr preached that since whites had actively harmed blacks through the practice of slavery, they should do something special to fix it. I agree with that. However, the whites who are coming of age at this point in time have done nothing of the sort - why should they have to apologise for the actions of their predecessors? Why should a young white woman be punished for things that happened before she was even born? Is she responsible for the actions of all the whites who have ever lived just because she is also white? Do you really think that MLK was talking about future generations who are disconnected from those actions or the people who were right in front of him and still actively encouraging prejudice and racism back in those days? My personal opinion is that if someone participated in those practices, they should make good on them, say sorry, and help the person up, which includes paying what's owed and making room for them.
      - kalkin 14y ago
        I don't think "here's the dictionary definition" is usually a useful argument, but in any case it's hard for me to see affirmative action as "excluding" white people, since it's generally practiced in fields where they remain dominant. I agree that in a world where racial discrimination is a thing of the distant past, affirmative action wouldn't make sense. But that's not our world. See for example: http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf
        jrogers65 14y ago
        If the issue is that people are suffering prejudice based on their names then a better solution is to mask the names during the initial screening as opposed to making it a point to hire someone based on race. I'm sure that a study exploring the effects of different "white-sounding" names would see differences too. Also note that the study does not draw any correlation between racism and the judgement of a name. Given people's tendency to be averse to things they are not familiar with, it's possible that it's a problem of someone not being comfortable with a culture they don't understand and not necessarily a problem with skin color.
        kalkin 14y ago
        Do you really think that people are biased with respect to names, but then forget that bias as soon as the person enters the room? Also, it's unclear to me why it might be better to be prejudiced against African-American names than against African-American skin tones. Your definition of racism appears to (a) include policies that disadvantage the dominant group (white people), even when motivated by a goal of correcting historical injustice and insufficient to undo their/our dominance, but to (b) exclude actions that disadvantage the historically oppressed group (Black people), even when motivated by prejudice, as long as that prejudice isn't explicitly based on skin color. Do you maybe want to reconsider?
  - jamesmiller5 14y ago
    Those people probably don't understand how much of a disadvantage minorities face even in this day and age. I used to be against affirmative action until I realized how many more opportunities were offered to me simply because of my culture and the expectations of my culture for me.
blazay_blazay 14y ago
So you are opposed to separate male and female lavatories?
- jrogers65 14y ago
  I'm starting to get tired of responding to gaslighting comments like these. Do you honestly not understand that males and females are biologically different (and so have preferences for different types of ways to dispose waste), that they have strong emotional reactions when seeing each other nude or partially nude and that they might be embarrassed if a member of the opposite sex heard them taking a shit? For the record, a lot of countries do have unisex toilets and that works out just fine too.
  - blazay_blazay 14y ago
    I honestly understand that quite fine. The GP of my original comment stated "You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't." It seems the three of us are in agreement that in the lavatory case letting gender affect decisions (in this case the common decision for one gender only facilities) is not wrong or sexist. Yet you jumped on him/her as a defender of sexism and prejudice when in reality you, and probably everybody else, takes gender into account in many benign or benevolent contexts as well.
    - jrogers65 14y ago
      Different toilets are accommodating for different physical differences. It's not racism if someone is selling suntan lotion on the beach and only approaching light skinned people. In the case of poverty, this is not a genetic difference - it's the product of culture. Poverty has no color, anyone can be affected by it. Why then, when the problem is not of skin color but of poverty, are we talking about skin color at all? The way I see it is that there are people who need a hand up because they lack the resources to get up - I don't see a whole race as being disadvantaged because that is extremely presumptuous and inaccurate - there are plenty of rich black people. The simple solution to this is to make things like education free if you earn below a certain amount. This resolves the issue that affirmative action tries to tackle without siding with a particular race. It's just common sense.
EliRivers 14y ago
Tell me, when assigning hotel rooms at a conference, and some people have requested to share a room to economise, and requested to be paired with people of the same sex, would you ignore people's gender and pick room-sharers randomly out of a hat? Trivial example, yes, but a simple way to demonstrate that sometimes deciding on basis of gender is not actually wrong. When I hire, I think about what each applicant will bring to the team. There are noticeable differences between a team in which every member exhibits stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics, and a team in which some members exhibit stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics whilst some other members exhibit stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics. Sometimes, the second kind of team is better suited for a task than the first, and as a bonus, often the stereotypical males behave better and don't act like children. The only reliable way I've found to bring stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics to the team is to hire someone who actually has those characteristics, and nine times out of ten that person is female. If I ignored that, it'd be like taking a stance where I ignored things such as someone's employment history, or their education history.
sejje 14y ago
Your comment hardly falls under the "civil" guideline this community aspires to. Sexism as you have attacked it seems to be "making any decision based on gender," since that's how the grandparent defined it. I can think of countless examples where it's certainly okay to make a decision based on gender. Particularly where gender is the only known variable--there's your decision all wrapped up for you. An example to make my argument more real-world: Joe works a job where he has to move heavy objects with another employee. His partner quits, and boss has two new recruits from HR--one man, one woman. That's all the boss knows. If you don't think that women and men statistically fit into different stereotypes (physically, particularly), you should maybe redirect your species-damning shame.

I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make me ashamed to be human.

kalkin 14y ago

Jeez, as far as I can tell the person you're replying to is just defending affirmative action.

jrogers65 14y ago
Many people argue that affirmative action is institutionalized racism.
- kalkin 14y ago
  Many people ... who don't know what institutional racism looks like. (One requirement would probably be that the discriminated-against group actually ends up with worse outcomes. Compare to say, Black people in the criminal justice system.) I mean, seriously, even if you oppose affirmative action, do you really want to say that its advocates are morally equivalent to racial oppressors and make you ashamed of humanity? Martin Luther King, Jr. makes you ashamed of humanity?
  - jrogers65 14y ago
    Perhaps our definitions of institutional racism differ but I'm going by the dictionary definition: >Accepted social arrangements that exclude on the basis of race. Source: http://dictionary.babylon.com/institutional_racism/ http://dictionary.babylon.com/institutional_racism/ As such, affirmative action fits the bill. Martin Luther King Jr preached that since whites had actively harmed blacks through the practice of slavery, they should do something special to fix it. I agree with that. However, the whites who are coming of age at this point in time have done nothing of the sort - why should they have to apologise for the actions of their predecessors? Why should a young white woman be punished for things that happened before she was even born? Is she responsible for the actions of all the whites who have ever lived just because she is also white? Do you really think that MLK was talking about future generations who are disconnected from those actions or the people who were right in front of him and still actively encouraging prejudice and racism back in those days? My personal opinion is that if someone participated in those practices, they should make good on them, say sorry, and help the person up, which includes paying what's owed and making room for them.
    - kalkin 14y ago
      I don't think "here's the dictionary definition" is usually a useful argument, but in any case it's hard for me to see affirmative action as "excluding" white people, since it's generally practiced in fields where they remain dominant. I agree that in a world where racial discrimination is a thing of the distant past, affirmative action wouldn't make sense. But that's not our world. See for example: http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf
      - jrogers65 14y ago
        If the issue is that people are suffering prejudice based on their names then a better solution is to mask the names during the initial screening as opposed to making it a point to hire someone based on race. I'm sure that a study exploring the effects of different "white-sounding" names would see differences too. Also note that the study does not draw any correlation between racism and the judgement of a name. Given people's tendency to be averse to things they are not familiar with, it's possible that it's a problem of someone not being comfortable with a culture they don't understand and not necessarily a problem with skin color.
        kalkin 14y ago
        Do you really think that people are biased with respect to names, but then forget that bias as soon as the person enters the room? Also, it's unclear to me why it might be better to be prejudiced against African-American names than against African-American skin tones. Your definition of racism appears to (a) include policies that disadvantage the dominant group (white people), even when motivated by a goal of correcting historical injustice and insufficient to undo their/our dominance, but to (b) exclude actions that disadvantage the historically oppressed group (Black people), even when motivated by prejudice, as long as that prejudice isn't explicitly based on skin color. Do you maybe want to reconsider?
- jamesmiller5 14y ago
  Those people probably don't understand how much of a disadvantage minorities face even in this day and age. I used to be against affirmative action until I realized how many more opportunities were offered to me simply because of my culture and the expectations of my culture for me.

blazay_blazay 14y ago

So you are opposed to separate male and female lavatories?

jrogers65 14y ago
I'm starting to get tired of responding to gaslighting comments like these. Do you honestly not understand that males and females are biologically different (and so have preferences for different types of ways to dispose waste), that they have strong emotional reactions when seeing each other nude or partially nude and that they might be embarrassed if a member of the opposite sex heard them taking a shit? For the record, a lot of countries do have unisex toilets and that works out just fine too.
- blazay_blazay 14y ago
  I honestly understand that quite fine. The GP of my original comment stated "You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't." It seems the three of us are in agreement that in the lavatory case letting gender affect decisions (in this case the common decision for one gender only facilities) is not wrong or sexist. Yet you jumped on him/her as a defender of sexism and prejudice when in reality you, and probably everybody else, takes gender into account in many benign or benevolent contexts as well.
  - jrogers65 14y ago
    Different toilets are accommodating for different physical differences. It's not racism if someone is selling suntan lotion on the beach and only approaching light skinned people. In the case of poverty, this is not a genetic difference - it's the product of culture. Poverty has no color, anyone can be affected by it. Why then, when the problem is not of skin color but of poverty, are we talking about skin color at all? The way I see it is that there are people who need a hand up because they lack the resources to get up - I don't see a whole race as being disadvantaged because that is extremely presumptuous and inaccurate - there are plenty of rich black people. The simple solution to this is to make things like education free if you earn below a certain amount. This resolves the issue that affirmative action tries to tackle without siding with a particular race. It's just common sense.

EliRivers 14y ago

Tell me, when assigning hotel rooms at a conference, and some people have requested to share a room to economise, and requested to be paired with people of the same sex, would you ignore people's gender and pick room-sharers randomly out of a hat? Trivial example, yes, but a simple way to demonstrate that sometimes deciding on basis of gender is not actually wrong. When I hire, I think about what each applicant will bring to the team. There are noticeable differences between a team in which every member exhibits stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics, and a team in which some members exhibit stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics whilst some other members exhibit stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics. Sometimes, the second kind of team is better suited for a task than the first, and as a bonus, often the stereotypical males behave better and don't act like children. The only reliable way I've found to bring stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics to the team is to hire someone who actually has those characteristics, and nine times out of ten that person is female. If I ignored that, it'd be like taking a stance where I ignored things such as someone's employment history, or their education history.

sejje 14y ago

Your comment hardly falls under the "civil" guideline this community aspires to. Sexism as you have attacked it seems to be "making any decision based on gender," since that's how the grandparent defined it. I can think of countless examples where it's certainly okay to make a decision based on gender. Particularly where gender is the only known variable--there's your decision all wrapped up for you. An example to make my argument more real-world: Joe works a job where he has to move heavy objects with another employee. His partner quits, and boss has two new recruits from HR--one man, one woman. That's all the boss knows. If you don't think that women and men statistically fit into different stereotypes (physically, particularly), you should maybe redirect your species-damning shame.