5 ms·

What's the evidence that sexism is a more tractable problem than racism? Just curious...

by harryh 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- gizmo 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you're hinting at with your remark about racial disparities with regard to education, IQ and culture. Right now your comment looks pretty racist.
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    The average American man and the average American woman have the same IQ, were raised in fairly similar cultural environments, and received fairly similar educations. But compare the average black man and the average white man. The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations), somewhat different culture (more likely to have grown up in poverty, more likely to speak in AAVE, more likely to have come from a broken home, etc), and worse education (likely went to worse schools as a kid, less likely to have gone to college, etc). Maybe I am racist for writing that, but I think it would be more racist to ignore those facts, because that would lead to ignoring the problems and not trying to help disadvantaged groups.
    - gizmo 12y ago
      Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test. Black people (and other minorities) are being actively discriminated against. In terms of the neighborhoods they live in (white flight), law enforcement (stop and frisk, minimum sentences, racial profiling), employment, housing (mortgage applications) and so on. This active discrimination is an ongoing and constant problem that goes all the way back to apartheid. Black people will do better when white people stop holding them back. Conflating black culture and active discrimination has racist connotations. For instance appalling Wall Street behavior is not condemned as a failing of white culture, but street crime is erroneously attributed as a failing of black culture. There are a thousand other examples. Black culture: music, food, dance, art, speech are not to blame. No more than white culture is to blame for WW2. It's part of the racist discourse where environmental factors are described as if they're innate failings of people who are genetically no different from anybody else. Now I don't believe you're a racist person (you probably don't think group X is inferior to group Y), but the arguments you make have racist connotations for the reasons I gave above.
      - thrownaway999 12y ago
        When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back. When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back. White people! Stay exactly where you are!
        gizmo 12y ago
        Individual people/families (regardless of race) are not to blame for the effect they have on the housing market, even though the consequences are predictable and well documented. The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.
      - streptomycin 12y ago
        I don't disagree with you. In fact, everything you wrote is in agreement with my original post. All of those challenges you describe are just some of the factors that make the racial disparity a more difficult problem to solve than the gender disparity. And yet, my original post is now deleted, so we can go along pretending these problems don't exist.
    - NaitJones 12y ago
      "The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot
      - streptomycin 12y ago
        That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_St... Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). ... Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
        NaitJones 12y ago
        That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.
        streptomycin 12y ago
        You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post. Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing. Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?
tzs 12y ago
If someone doesn't want to consider women for a job, it probably means that they think women have some inherent unsuitableness for that particular job. They aren't aggressive enough for sales, or don't have the upper body strength for landscaping, or some such. They don't mind hiring women for jobs that they think women can do (secretary). They probably have women friends, date or marry women, and so on. If someone doesn't want to consider blacks for a job, it probably means they don't like black people, and they don't care if a particular black person can do the particular job. They don't want black people around for any job. The former is more tractable because it involves changing someone's attitude about specific objections about people that they have no general objection to. The latter requires changing a general objection.
- harryh 12y ago
  That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis. Is there evidence that supports it?
- tomjen3 12y ago
  Counterpoint: in the Jim Crow South and in Apartheid South Africa black people were often employed by white people, but only for the most menial jobs (like cleaning and house keeping). They very much do didn't like black people.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  > "They don't want black people around for any job." This is observably false. In American culture there are many jobs are perceived to be "for" blacks, and jobs that are perceived to be "for" hispanics. Racism and sexism isn't as different as you seem to think it is. In the modern context (i.e., not guys in hoods hanging you from a tree) it is all about perception and opposing when races/genders stray from their "place" in society. This is even observable in Asians, who are disproportionately highly employed in tech, but represents but a tiny proportion of leadership positions. Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead. This is why people object against even positive stereotyping of races, because ultimately the bulk of the racism we deal with today isn't the foaming-at-the-mouth homicidal-rage type of racism, it's more casual and has everything to do with perceptions of what a race should, and shouldn't, be doing in society. Positive and negative stereotypes both contribute to pigeonholing people into their races. Try talking to an Asian artist about this. "Positive" stereotypes of being mathematical, analytical, and traditionalist are actively harming people who don't fit the description and are trying to work jobs outside of their racial stereotypes.
danielweber 12y ago
In the short term (meaning a few generations) even very sexist people tend to have kids of the opposite sex, while racists seldom have kids of another race.

What's the evidence that sexism is a more tractable problem than racism? Just curious...

by harryh 12y ago

What's the evidence that sexism is a more tractable problem than racism? Just curious...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

gizmo 12y ago
I'm not sure what you're hinting at with your remark about racial disparities with regard to education, IQ and culture. Right now your comment looks pretty racist.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  The average American man and the average American woman have the same IQ, were raised in fairly similar cultural environments, and received fairly similar educations. But compare the average black man and the average white man. The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations), somewhat different culture (more likely to have grown up in poverty, more likely to speak in AAVE, more likely to have come from a broken home, etc), and worse education (likely went to worse schools as a kid, less likely to have gone to college, etc). Maybe I am racist for writing that, but I think it would be more racist to ignore those facts, because that would lead to ignoring the problems and not trying to help disadvantaged groups.
  - gizmo 12y ago
    Because of racist laws, policies and practices Black people have fewer opportunities from literally before they're born. Studies indicate that poor nutrition and other environmental factors explain the "IQ gap" nearly completely. The remaining points are most likely an issue of bias in the tests themselves. Most white people wouldn't do well in an AAVE based IQ test. Black people (and other minorities) are being actively discriminated against. In terms of the neighborhoods they live in (white flight), law enforcement (stop and frisk, minimum sentences, racial profiling), employment, housing (mortgage applications) and so on. This active discrimination is an ongoing and constant problem that goes all the way back to apartheid. Black people will do better when white people stop holding them back. Conflating black culture and active discrimination has racist connotations. For instance appalling Wall Street behavior is not condemned as a failing of white culture, but street crime is erroneously attributed as a failing of black culture. There are a thousand other examples. Black culture: music, food, dance, art, speech are not to blame. No more than white culture is to blame for WW2. It's part of the racist discourse where environmental factors are described as if they're innate failings of people who are genetically no different from anybody else. Now I don't believe you're a racist person (you probably don't think group X is inferior to group Y), but the arguments you make have racist connotations for the reasons I gave above.
    - thrownaway999 12y ago
      When white people enter a black neighborhood, it is "gentrification", and it holds blacks back. When white people move out of a black neighborhood, it is "white flight" and it holds blacks back. White people! Stay exactly where you are!
      - gizmo 12y ago
        Individual people/families (regardless of race) are not to blame for the effect they have on the housing market, even though the consequences are predictable and well documented. The effects of gentrification and white flight demonstrate how ingrained the bias against black people and other minorities still is.
    - streptomycin 12y ago
      I don't disagree with you. In fact, everything you wrote is in agreement with my original post. All of those challenges you describe are just some of the factors that make the racial disparity a more difficult problem to solve than the gender disparity. And yet, my original post is now deleted, so we can go along pretending these problems don't exist.
  - NaitJones 12y ago
    "The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot
    - streptomycin 12y ago
      That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_St... Rushton & Jensen (2005) write that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They state that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). ... Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
      - NaitJones 12y ago
        That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.
        streptomycin 12y ago
        You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post. Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing. Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?

tzs 12y ago

If someone doesn't want to consider women for a job, it probably means that they think women have some inherent unsuitableness for that particular job. They aren't aggressive enough for sales, or don't have the upper body strength for landscaping, or some such. They don't mind hiring women for jobs that they think women can do (secretary). They probably have women friends, date or marry women, and so on. If someone doesn't want to consider blacks for a job, it probably means they don't like black people, and they don't care if a particular black person can do the particular job. They don't want black people around for any job. The former is more tractable because it involves changing someone's attitude about specific objections about people that they have no general objection to. The latter requires changing a general objection.

harryh 12y ago
That's certainly a reasonable hypothesis. Is there evidence that supports it?
tomjen3 12y ago
Counterpoint: in the Jim Crow South and in Apartheid South Africa black people were often employed by white people, but only for the most menial jobs (like cleaning and house keeping). They very much do didn't like black people.
potatolicious 12y ago
> "They don't want black people around for any job." This is observably false. In American culture there are many jobs are perceived to be "for" blacks, and jobs that are perceived to be "for" hispanics. Racism and sexism isn't as different as you seem to think it is. In the modern context (i.e., not guys in hoods hanging you from a tree) it is all about perception and opposing when races/genders stray from their "place" in society. This is even observable in Asians, who are disproportionately highly employed in tech, but represents but a tiny proportion of leadership positions. Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead. This is why people object against even positive stereotyping of races, because ultimately the bulk of the racism we deal with today isn't the foaming-at-the-mouth homicidal-rage type of racism, it's more casual and has everything to do with perceptions of what a race should, and shouldn't, be doing in society. Positive and negative stereotypes both contribute to pigeonholing people into their races. Try talking to an Asian artist about this. "Positive" stereotypes of being mathematical, analytical, and traditionalist are actively harming people who don't fit the description and are trying to work jobs outside of their racial stereotypes.

danielweber 12y ago

In the short term (meaning a few generations) even very sexist people tend to have kids of the opposite sex, while racists seldom have kids of another race.