7 ms·
It's _not_ a hard question. First off, the rate of attrition among these specific minority groups is dramatically higher than it is for whites of any class. Ho
by antics 12y ago
It's _not_ a hard question.
First off, the rate of attrition among these specific minority groups is dramatically higher than it is for whites of any class. How many women who start as engineers are still engineers 10 years out? Look it up. If the disadvantages really are the same, then why is it that whites from lower income brackets do not have the same problem?
The answer -- as other users have pointed out to you repeatedly over the last few months -- is because the disadvantage is systemic and widespread.
That is why these scholarships are a good thing.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoAgain: I didn't claim that whites are on average as disadvantaged as anyone. I claimed that the group { x : disadvantaged(x) == true } is more disadvantaged than { x : black(x) == true }. To prove this fact all I need to do is find a single black person who isn't. This proves that P(disadvantage|black) < 1, whereas P(disadvantage|disadvantage)=1. So now we have the following groups, ordered by disadvantage: white < black < disadvantaged Why do you attempt to remedy the disadvantage of the second most disadvantaged group, but not the most disadvantaged group? Telling me stats about blacks and whites does not address this question. The disadvantage stats are, by definition, higher for the group I've explicitly constructed to be 100% disadvantaged.
- achompas 12y agoYour point does not distinguish between flavors of disadvantage. Minorities and women have to deal with systemic racism and/or sexism Here's how I suggest HS reach out to women/minorities: provide them with grants if they apply to Hacker School. Done! Effective outreach so that traditionally-marginalized groups might participate enough to overcome institutionalized racism/sexism.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoWe might be getting somewhere. What is "systemic"? I.e., how do I determine if a disadvantage is systemic or not? If I'm understanding right, your reasoning is: 1) Positive claim: women and minorities (including asians?) suffer systemic racism. 2) Normative claim: Victims of systemic disadvantage deserve special privileges, victims of non-systemic disadvantage do not. (I'm a bit shaky on this one - let me know if it's wrong.) 3) Normative conclusion: special privileges for women/minorities. If that's correct, I can fully reproduce your reasoning once I know the definition of "systemic".
- achompas 12y ago"Systemic" here is defined as "integrated deeply into a system." In this case, "systemic racism/sexism" refers to "the deep integration of racism/sexism in a particular institution or industry." Also, I would amend #2 to say: "victims of systemic racism/sexism may be able to overcome those via targeted outreach."
- yummyfajitas 12y agoCan you give me a concrete test I can use to determine whether something is systemic or not? And will any old system do? Your amended (2) is a positive claim. It tells us "if X happens then Y will happen". You cannot draw a normative conclusion from a sequence of positive claims. You need a "should" or "aught" or "morally good" or "ethical" in there somewhere. Discussions like this online are pushing me in the direction of favoring mandatory philosophical education.
- achompas 12y agoListen, it's not my responsibility to educate you on these issues. They've been covered extensively by sociological experts. Before participating in these discussions, I suggest you look around for some of the resources that cover these topics.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoThe uncited experts who's authority I'm fallaciously appealing to say your experts are wrong and a bunch of jerks. It's also a bit silly to participate in a discussion and suddenly declare that it's not your responsibility to participate after logic fails you. One conclusion I have drawn from this - none of the pro-racist decisions people have a clue what the moral underpinnings of their views are beyond "liberal authorities tell me to believe this, so I do".
- achompas 12y agoI honestly don't want to sit on HN and debate whether my claims about systemic racism are positive or normative with someone who believes I need a philosophical education. That's why I'm bowing out. Good luck.
- antics 12y agoIf you don't reach out specifically to minorities (women, for example), then the outreach doesn't work. So the groups that are systematically marginalized will never apply to begin with, meaning that your set that you've "constructed" doesn't actually contain the really negative cases. Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here. We don't have room for any of this "theoretical best" philosophical stuff you're working on here. There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoBy definition, the set D={ x : disadvantaged(x) == true } contains anyone who is "systematically marginalized" (assuming that being "systematically marginalized" is actually a disadvantage). Concretely, are you saying my set D does not contain Sasha Obama, but it should? Or another example - my girlfriend is an upper middle class black woman from a majority black country. The minute she steps off a plane in the US, will she suddenly become more deserving of assistance than the white son of a single mother who earned $11,000/year household income? If you are determined to slice by race, the answer is yes. Let M represent either Sasha Obama or my girlfriend. Your assertions about racial averages takes the following form: 1. mean(M,N,O) < mean(U,V,W) 2. M > U 3. ??? 4. Therefore, we should preferentially support M over U, N over V, etc. Step 3 is where I'm confused. Step 3 is a normative principle - you cannot derive a "should" conclusion from a fact without one. What is that principle? Look, we're not writing a philosophy paper or doing set theory here...There are reasons why this shit is set up like it is. How is this not a philosophical question? I'm sure there are reasons why "shit is set up like it is" - "tribal politics" fits the facts well. But I'm hoping for a more interesting explanation than that. And I'm asking because I'm honestly interested. A lot of smart people seem to buy into stuff like this, and I try to understand it due to Chesterton's Fence.
- antics 12y agoI take it from your response that you entirely ignored my response about targeting outreach at demographics that have high attrition and low entrance rates. Specifically those groups. That's what we do when we do outreach. I don't know what else to say. It's extremely simple. Targeted outreach works. You pick groups you want to include, and you target them for outreach. Why are you making this so hard? Honestly, I question whether you're really interested. You do this on literally every thread where sexism comes up. It sounds to me like you really just want an argument. EDIT: And, your insinuation that it's all tribal politics, instead of a very careful investigation of what outreach methods work for getting disadvantaged people into programs they wouldn't normally have access to is in such bad faith it's hard to even muster up the will to reply.
- tomp 12y agoI read the whole thread from here down, and I must say that I completely agree with you. I also think that positive discrimination is discrimination and is bad/immoral, and that we should focus on affirmative action only towards people who are actually disadvantaged. I also often get down-voted for saying so.