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This was a comment to the Okcupid post: > A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considera

This was a comment to the Okcupid post: > A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums. I just wanted to call that out in case anyone has been taught that way, but not had a chance to think it through clearly. Becoming successful doesn't make the rest of humanity less successful - it makes them more successful. It's not a "simple and unfortunate fact" that Vietnamese people immigrating to America revolutionized nail salons and made them affordable to almost all women while making themselves wealthy. It's not a "simple and unfortunate fact" that many of the greatest American scientists of the last 100 years have been Ashkenazi Jewish. And so on. It's not unfortunate when one group of people is succeeding - it brings up all of the rest of humanity. One group of people succeeding is not unfortunate; others failing is unfortunate and we can work to rectify that, but never feel guilty about succeeding and prospering.

kgrin 17y ago
The "unfortunate" comment seemed to be directed at the relative inequality, not the fact that whites are "succeeding". I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context. Inequality may be the least-bad outcome given the menu of potential remedies ("Harrison Bergeron" and all that), but it's not a great thing in and of itself. Particularly given the historical and occasional modern-day evidence of straight-up racism (see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_104521293/ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_10452... ), I think it's reasonable to at least scrutinize situations of high inequality to figure out whether they are, in fact, just caused by some people working harder or being more lucky or what have you, or whether there are actual problems. On the merits, though, I think OKCupid's matching algorithm (the questions) theoretically accounts for the social, economic and cultural differences - what their data shows ("suggests" is probably more appropriate) is that people react to race even after controlling for the other factors, which is at least interesting. Edit: just to clarify and follow up - here's my claim: if the relative dominance of Ashkenazi Jews among American scientists, or Vietnamese women among nail-salon entrepreneurs, were the result of, say, discrimination, or government subsidies at others' expense, or some sort of other external factor that made the "competition" unfair, then it would be fair to categorize that inequality as "unfortunate". As far as I'm aware, that's not the case for either of those examples (and in fact is somewhat the opposite). But if it were (and the author of the original comment we're talking about seems to make that assumption about whites being better off on many socioeconomic measures), then calling that inequality "unfortunate" wouldn't be out of line.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context. I'll address it, but before I do - look at how you framed the question and response. It's mildly disingenuous and makes it hard to have a discussion. Take this: "I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing" I don't know anyone that's making that claim. I mean that literally - I don't know anyone who says, "Economic and educational inequality along racial lines is a good thing." Most certainly I didn't make the claim, and I don't know of anyone that has. But let's talk about relative inequality, because it's important. Take some groups of people - could be race, gender, religion, favorite color of car, anything. Some of the groups are doing better than others. Is there a problem there? Well, sure, there is. You've got some people not doing as well as the rest of people. It'd be good for them to do better. But is the problem that there are others that are doing well? Well, this comes down to how you think the world operates. Is most wealth created by people benefiting humanity or destroying humanity? This can actually be looked into, and generally speaking, the way to get wealthy is to benefit humanity. This is kind of new thinking though - the old world thinking is that stealing from and oppressing people was what successful people were doing. This leads to innate hostility to people doing well, which is misplaced. The path to wealth these days to benefit other people, as Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists have done. So here's what I'm saying: You should do the best you can. If someone is not doing as well as you, it would be good for them to do better. It would not be good for you to do worse. You should not feel guilty or uneasy about doing well, or about the race or religion you're part of doing well. You can feel bad that other races or religions aren't doing as well. But you should always feel good that you're doing well, and keep trying to do well, and do right as much as you can while doing well.
  - kgrin 17y ago
    If I misunderstood your point, I apologize. Care to correct? Here's what I understood to be the debate: Original comment you quoted: > A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums. Your response (paraphrased, I hope fairly): Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists did quite well, and that's not unfortunate at all. Inequality isn't inherently bad, and we should focus on bringing people up rather than down (or for people to bring themselves up, etc.) Either your response is a bit of a non-sequitur, or the logical inference is that the fact "whites are at the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum" isn't 'unfortunate' (which is sort of a squishy word, but that's just the OP's language). I understood that to be the point you were responding to - if that's wrong, then I apologize and please do set me straight. My point was that the OP calling better socio-economic 'outcomes' for whites "unfortunate" is pretty reasonable, as there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that it's not just the result of benign factors (see: history of slavery and segregation; evidence of present-day racism, as in the article I linked). Likewise (and I sort of hate to use this example), a monopolist's market dominance may be the result of a superior product, or an unfair/illegal abuse of [whatever]. In the latter case, calling that monopolist's position "unfortunate" doesn't seem out of bounds - even if the best remedy is to bring the other market actors up, or even do nothing. You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.
rsheridan6 17y ago
>>> A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums. That's not altogether true. Asians earn more on average than whites. The ethnic group with the highest income is Indians. It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs?
- kelnos 17y ago
  > It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs? I'd guess yes. "Blending in" can make it a lot easier to work with other people. Also being born in the US would make you more familiar with the US and how it works. Someone arriving in the US at age 25 would not only miss out on that intimate knowledge, but would likely have a bunch of misconceptions about how things worked based on their experiences back home. Then again, you could also make the argument that the type of person who moves to a new country does so for a reason, usually because they think they'll have greater opportunities there. It's not unreasonable to expect that kind of person to be better focused and harder working, which may very well take up the slack. But yeah, real stats would be interesting to see...
  - rsheridan6 17y ago
    It would also be interesting to see how American-born Harold and Kumar do compared to whites who are otherwise similar to them.

kgrin 17y ago

The "unfortunate" comment seemed to be directed at the relative inequality, not the fact that whites are "succeeding". I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context. Inequality may be the least-bad outcome given the menu of potential remedies ("Harrison Bergeron" and all that), but it's not a great thing in and of itself. Particularly given the historical and occasional modern-day evidence of straight-up racism (see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_104521293/ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_10452... ), I think it's reasonable to at least scrutinize situations of high inequality to figure out whether they are, in fact, just caused by some people working harder or being more lucky or what have you, or whether there are actual problems. On the merits, though, I think OKCupid's matching algorithm (the questions) theoretically accounts for the social, economic and cultural differences - what their data shows ("suggests" is probably more appropriate) is that people react to race even after controlling for the other factors, which is at least interesting. Edit: just to clarify and follow up - here's my claim: if the relative dominance of Ashkenazi Jews among American scientists, or Vietnamese women among nail-salon entrepreneurs, were the result of, say, discrimination, or government subsidies at others' expense, or some sort of other external factor that made the "competition" unfair, then it would be fair to categorize that inequality as "unfortunate". As far as I'm aware, that's not the case for either of those examples (and in fact is somewhat the opposite). But if it were (and the author of the original comment we're talking about seems to make that assumption about whites being better off on many socioeconomic measures), then calling that inequality "unfortunate" wouldn't be out of line.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
lionhearted 17y ago
> I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context. I'll address it, but before I do - look at how you framed the question and response. It's mildly disingenuous and makes it hard to have a discussion. Take this: "I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing" I don't know anyone that's making that claim. I mean that literally - I don't know anyone who says, "Economic and educational inequality along racial lines is a good thing." Most certainly I didn't make the claim, and I don't know of anyone that has. But let's talk about relative inequality, because it's important. Take some groups of people - could be race, gender, religion, favorite color of car, anything. Some of the groups are doing better than others. Is there a problem there? Well, sure, there is. You've got some people not doing as well as the rest of people. It'd be good for them to do better. But is the problem that there are others that are doing well? Well, this comes down to how you think the world operates. Is most wealth created by people benefiting humanity or destroying humanity? This can actually be looked into, and generally speaking, the way to get wealthy is to benefit humanity. This is kind of new thinking though - the old world thinking is that stealing from and oppressing people was what successful people were doing. This leads to innate hostility to people doing well, which is misplaced. The path to wealth these days to benefit other people, as Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists have done. So here's what I'm saying: You should do the best you can. If someone is not doing as well as you, it would be good for them to do better. It would not be good for you to do worse. You should not feel guilty or uneasy about doing well, or about the race or religion you're part of doing well. You can feel bad that other races or religions aren't doing as well. But you should always feel good that you're doing well, and keep trying to do well, and do right as much as you can while doing well.
- kgrin 17y ago
  If I misunderstood your point, I apologize. Care to correct? Here's what I understood to be the debate: Original comment you quoted: > A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums. Your response (paraphrased, I hope fairly): Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists did quite well, and that's not unfortunate at all. Inequality isn't inherently bad, and we should focus on bringing people up rather than down (or for people to bring themselves up, etc.) Either your response is a bit of a non-sequitur, or the logical inference is that the fact "whites are at the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum" isn't 'unfortunate' (which is sort of a squishy word, but that's just the OP's language). I understood that to be the point you were responding to - if that's wrong, then I apologize and please do set me straight. My point was that the OP calling better socio-economic 'outcomes' for whites "unfortunate" is pretty reasonable, as there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that it's not just the result of benign factors (see: history of slavery and segregation; evidence of present-day racism, as in the article I linked). Likewise (and I sort of hate to use this example), a monopolist's market dominance may be the result of a superior product, or an unfair/illegal abuse of [whatever]. In the latter case, calling that monopolist's position "unfortunate" doesn't seem out of bounds - even if the best remedy is to bring the other market actors up, or even do nothing. You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.

rsheridan6 17y ago

>>> A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums. That's not altogether true. Asians earn more on average than whites. The ethnic group with the highest income is Indians. It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs?

kelnos 17y ago
> It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs? I'd guess yes. "Blending in" can make it a lot easier to work with other people. Also being born in the US would make you more familiar with the US and how it works. Someone arriving in the US at age 25 would not only miss out on that intimate knowledge, but would likely have a bunch of misconceptions about how things worked based on their experiences back home. Then again, you could also make the argument that the type of person who moves to a new country does so for a reason, usually because they think they'll have greater opportunities there. It's not unreasonable to expect that kind of person to be better focused and harder working, which may very well take up the slack. But yeah, real stats would be interesting to see...
- rsheridan6 17y ago
  It would also be interesting to see how American-born Harold and Kumar do compared to whites who are otherwise similar to them.