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Nobody except you said there was a threat of violence. Yzzxy did refer to violent segregation: ""Seperate but equal" was abandoned by SCOTUS decades ago. Maybe

Nobody except you said there was a threat of violence. Yzzxy did refer to violent segregation: ""Seperate but equal" was abandoned by SCOTUS decades ago. Maybe it's time for you to catch up." The fact is that housing segregation in this era was enforced by threats of violence, aka "law". Same for banking regulations. Instead you ended by asserting that any definition arguments are pointless Providing definitions is important to clarify thinking. Thanks to you providing a definition, I know what concepts you refer to when you say "segregation". In contrast, I don't know what concept "systemic" refers to because of the lack of a definition. There is no point in me telling you your definition is wrong. If I convince you, all that will happen is you'll apply different mental labels to the same things. Your conclusions will remain the same, they'll just be phrased with different words. Further, all this argument over definitions has gotten us completely distracted from the actual point. The point is this: humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence consumption choices (housing, movies, etc). Is this a bad thing that should be prevented and/or condemned? The definition of segregation is completely irrelevant to the answer to this question.

pron 12y ago
> The point is this: humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence consumption choices (housing, movies, etc). Is this a bad thing that should be prevented and/or condemned? No, see what you did there? While humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence their choices, there is a difference between those who can choose more and those who can choose less, and the discussion is about those who can can choose more restricting the mobility of those who can choose less. Those are facts -- they are not a matter of opinion or ideology, but the objective reality. It is you who decided that "tribalist feelings" are the cause of segregation, which is a nice hypothesis but a factually wrong one. What you have here isn't tribe A and tribe B, but a dominant tribe A and a weak tribe B, and power dynamics has a far stronger effect than in-group dynamics, as proven by history in this particular case and others like it. That there are several dynamics here concurrently does not mean that they're all equal in influence.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  While humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence their choices, there is a difference between those who can choose more and those who can choose less, and the discussion is about those who can can choose more restricting the mobility of those who can choose less. If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one has the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or sell a good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to a willing partner in trade. I also didn't "decide" anything. I merely asked a normative question. I know you have some vendetta against me, but it might help to read my comments before carrying on this vendetta.
  - pron 12y ago
    > If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one has the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or sell a good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to a willing partner in trade. That is not at all what was being discussed, but what you decided the discussion was about by making the wrong assumption that housing choices were as voluntary as picking movies. They are not, neither are they voluntary, as research shows (as well as the discussed article). Going back to "systemic", bureaucracies in the US (both private and governmental) do restrict housing choices by discriminating based on proxies for race (i.e. correlated variables, that are sometimes directly related to race, and sometimes less directly). I have no vendetta against you, but the way you're discussing these issues is insincere, and shows complete disregard to the vast body of evidence collected. But it does provoke an emotional reaction on my part because it is a prime example of "nerd bigotry" that's so rampant among startup people. You say you discuss objective facts, where, in fact, you make false analogies and presumptions that are precisely where racism is often found. The most obvious example, given by countless people before you, is that of "voluntary choice", while racism works precisely by restricting choice. I will not go at length into how that's done, because the process has been documented so many times and in great detail. But if person A has choices, say, 1 through 5, and person B has choices 1 thorough 3, and exercising those choices requires more effort on the part of person B, it is true that whatever person B chooses is voluntary, but it is no less true that it is less voluntary than the choice of person A. This is doubly true, if choices 4 and 5 -- unavailable to person B -- or, say, choice 3, which is available for person B but extremely hard to achieve, are precisely the choices that confer more power on their chooser. So: 1/ restriction of choice is not binary, and is often done in roundabout ways (which is why studies are required). 2/ Not all discrimination is equal :) - discrimination that results in unfair power distribution is far worse than discrimination that has little effect on the distribution of power.

pron 12y ago

> The point is this: humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence consumption choices (housing, movies, etc). Is this a bad thing that should be prevented and/or condemned? No, see what you did there? While humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence their choices, there is a difference between those who can choose more and those who can choose less, and the discussion is about those who can can choose more restricting the mobility of those who can choose less. Those are facts -- they are not a matter of opinion or ideology, but the objective reality. It is you who decided that "tribalist feelings" are the cause of segregation, which is a nice hypothesis but a factually wrong one. What you have here isn't tribe A and tribe B, but a dominant tribe A and a weak tribe B, and power dynamics has a far stronger effect than in-group dynamics, as proven by history in this particular case and others like it. That there are several dynamics here concurrently does not mean that they're all equal in influence.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
While humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence their choices, there is a difference between those who can choose more and those who can choose less, and the discussion is about those who can can choose more restricting the mobility of those who can choose less. If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one has the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or sell a good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to a willing partner in trade. I also didn't "decide" anything. I merely asked a normative question. I know you have some vendetta against me, but it might help to read my comments before carrying on this vendetta.
- pron 12y ago
  > If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one has the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or sell a good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to a willing partner in trade. That is not at all what was being discussed, but what you decided the discussion was about by making the wrong assumption that housing choices were as voluntary as picking movies. They are not, neither are they voluntary, as research shows (as well as the discussed article). Going back to "systemic", bureaucracies in the US (both private and governmental) do restrict housing choices by discriminating based on proxies for race (i.e. correlated variables, that are sometimes directly related to race, and sometimes less directly). I have no vendetta against you, but the way you're discussing these issues is insincere, and shows complete disregard to the vast body of evidence collected. But it does provoke an emotional reaction on my part because it is a prime example of "nerd bigotry" that's so rampant among startup people. You say you discuss objective facts, where, in fact, you make false analogies and presumptions that are precisely where racism is often found. The most obvious example, given by countless people before you, is that of "voluntary choice", while racism works precisely by restricting choice. I will not go at length into how that's done, because the process has been documented so many times and in great detail. But if person A has choices, say, 1 through 5, and person B has choices 1 thorough 3, and exercising those choices requires more effort on the part of person B, it is true that whatever person B chooses is voluntary, but it is no less true that it is less voluntary than the choice of person A. This is doubly true, if choices 4 and 5 -- unavailable to person B -- or, say, choice 3, which is available for person B but extremely hard to achieve, are precisely the choices that confer more power on their chooser. So: 1/ restriction of choice is not binary, and is often done in roundabout ways (which is why studies are required). 2/ Not all discrimination is equal :) - discrimination that results in unfair power distribution is far worse than discrimination that has little effect on the distribution of power.