Comments

  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    You said that not all cops are necessarily racist, yet you claim that systemic racism occurs in policing. How is that not a contradiction? Give concrete examples.Harry Hindu

    Because there's nothing contradictory about it. If you see a contradiction, you still don't understand what systemic racism is. I don't know what the block is here. And I already did give a concrete example from policing just on the previous page.

    "African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for petty crimes." Here's just one study demonstrating that "a black person more than 3 1/2 times more likely to be arrested for possession [of marijuana] than a white person, even though rates of usage are similar."

    https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
    Baden

    So, maybe you can explain why black people being more likely to be arrested for petty crimes necessitates all cops being racist?

    As for your apparent race realism, I've been debunking a biological basis for the folk notion of race. And I am right because there is none. There is no biological basis for a division of humans into "Black", "White", "Asian" etc. What there is is genetic variation among populations, including within and across folk racial groups. And that's explained in your own Whittle link above.

    "...it is important to distinguish between the word ‘race’ as it is socially used — say, the Black/African American, Native American, White, etc. racial categories used in the US census — from the biological sense, used to describe distinct populations within a species.

    ...the idea of an overarching ‘Black’ race utterly fails to capture the genetic diversity of African (or African-descended) peoples, irrespective of how we are now able to distinguish genetically related groups within the wider human population of Africa."

    https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2019/02/13/genetics-and-race-how-do-we-have-this-awkward-conversation/

    What Whittle misses, maybe as he's not a biologist or geneticist but is more interested in promoting free speech, is that we have, to replace "race", the concepts of haplogroups, clines, and demes, which are much more accurate and useful when talking about variations between human populations and don't carry the confusing baggage of folk notions of race, not to mention the taxonomical baggage of races being equated with subspecies etc. There are no subspecies of humans, there is one human race. And race essentialism is pseudoscience.

    "Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete"

    "all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, and ... subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)

    Again, from your other link, a quote demonstrating how the folk notion of race has no basis in biological reality:

    "In some ways all non-Africans can be thought of as a subset of the genetic variation of Africans. Those humans who reside outside of Africa are simply a diversified branch of Africans."

    https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/which-population-is-most-genetically-distant-from-africans

    Do you read your own links?

    So, it's all there even in your own material. Race essentialism is bunk. Race realism is bunk. And folk notions of race have no special biological significance but are social constructs. If you still don't get it, consider the following short conversation in which A is a shade realist and B is not.

    A: There are two shades of blue, dark blue and light blue.
    B: OK, but that's just an arbitrary cultural judgement with no basis in science.
    A: No it's not. Due to colour drift, the difference in wavelength between an average dark blue and an average light blue is absolutely discernible.
    B: Yeah, I know about colour drift, but colours vary on a continuum. Like I said, your division is arbitrary.
    A: No, no, no, watch this Dave Rubin video, he explains everything!

    Anyone who mentions genetic drift as support for the idea of the folk notion of races (rather than for variation among populations not coextensive with such folk notions) sounds as silly as A above. And it's a very close analogy only that we're not dealing with a perfectly smooth continuum but maybe 300 different groups. So, objectively if you absolutely must use the term 'race', you could say that there are either 300 races or 1 (as per @fdrake's video). All other divisions are arbitrary and trying to make them line up with folk notions of race as race realists try to do is not a scientific endeavour but an ideological one. And that ideology is called racism.

    Anyway, this is not the subject of the thread and as race realism is racist pseudoscience, I'm not going to give it any further oxygen here.

    "Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is a pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Historically, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

    Back on topic>> systemic racism.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    You didn't have a problem posting a link to fdrake's post with the videos, but you can't seem to do the same thing when it comes to your definition of "systemic racism"Harry Hindu

    It's on page one of the thread, so I expected you would find it yourself. In any case, here it is and it's in line with the standard definition.

    Systemic racism obtains when a system(s) function (regardless of explicit rules) to favour certain racial groups over others. It doesn't require overt individual racists (though it may protect and even reward them) nor does it necessarily require any conscious acts of racism at all (and obversely you could have conscious acts of racism in a system where no systemic racism exists, only rather than being performative of the system, they would be antithetical to it). Systems are culturally contextual, they're embedded in cultures and how they function depends on their relationship to the culture they're in. So, often it's what the system allows rather than what the system demands that's important. E.g. if you've got a justice or policing system embedded in a culture that's only recently emerged from the acceptance of explicitly institutionalised racism, you need extremely strong safeguards to avoid the continuance of implicit racism in whatever ostensibly non-racist institutions are substituted. Not having those safeguards in place means the explicit racism of before doesn't just disappear but finds footholds in the new institutions and festers there looking for opportunities to express itself.

    Systemic racism occurs in all areas of social life, policing, housing, education etc. And again, it's not primarily about explicitly racist acts or explicitly racist policies or legislation but how things work in practice to disadvantage communities of color. Here's an example relating to housing.

    https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

    "For much of the 20th century households of color were systematically excluded from federal homeownership programs, and government officials largely stood by as predatory lenders stripped them of wealth and stability.

    In the decades preceding the Fair Housing Act, government policies led many white Americans to believe that residents of color were a threat to local property values. For example, real estate professionals across the country who sought to maximize profits by leveraging this fear convinced white homeowners that Black families were moving in nearby and offered to buy their homes at a discount. These “blockbusters” would then sell the properties to Black families—who had limited access to FHA loans or GI Bill benefits—at marked-up prices and interest rates. Moreover, these homes were often purchased on contracts, rather than traditional mortgages, allowing real estate professionals to evict Black families if they missed even one payment and then repeat the process with other Black families.57 During this period, in Chicago alone, more than 8 in 10 Black homes were purchased on contract rather than a standard mortgage, resulting in cumulative losses of up to $4 billion. Blockbusting and contract buying were just two of several discriminatory wealth-stripping practices that lawmakers permitted in the U.S. housing system."

    Most likely, as with you, objections to the existence of systemic racism turn on a misunderstanding of what it is. As if it's just the type of claim that police are racist or police departments have racist policies. That's really not it. It's usually far subtler than that and, for being so, all the more pernicious.
    Baden
  • Argument: Why Fear Death?


    Thanks for the tag.

    it's a shame that I have been on here little over 24 hours and yet felt much worse for having joined. Please close my account, and any related thread/s.

    Thank you kindly.
    Wandering-Philosopher

    Sorry you feel that way. I'll do that.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    Then all you have done is show what systemic racism isn't when I've been asking for what it is.Harry Hindu

    Wrong again, I gave an explanation of it earlier in the thread. If you were interested in reading instead of.. whatever it is you are doing here, you'd know that. And if you don't know what systemic racism is now, you must not want to know.

    You mean to claim that you know what you are talking about but don't know what genetic drift and kin selection is? How do we know that the person in fdrake's video knows what they are talking about? What are their credentials on the subject? If the person never mentioned those terms that I did, then I wonder if they actually know what they are talking about.Harry Hindu

    Yes, I know what they are and I think you know I do but are playing some silly game here. Apart from having a basic knowledge of these things, I studied genetics and evolution in university and have a related degree. Now stop the bluffing and man up. What is your scientific argument? Where are your references? What are your objections to what's in the video? You haven't even told us that. You come across as not having any substance behind your rhetoric. Prove me wrong.

    And it still stands that it is people like you that are playing the race card, by assuming that every instance of blacks being killed by cops is an instance of racism.Harry Hindu

    I literally just dealt with this type of objection and pointed out it was a strawman in the last post. And yet you insist on repeating it. So, again, every instance of a black person being killed by cops does not have to be racist nor does every cop have to be racist for systemic racism to obtain. Please tattoo that on your forehead and look in the mirror before responding to any more of my posts.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)


    That did cause me a chuckle. It's classified information if he can block it and lies if he can't.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    It is BLM and people like you that are still focused on race because you keep using circular reasoning in assuming your conclusion (that cops are racist) to support your claim that the actions of cops are racist.Harry Hindu

    Again, systemic racism does not mean that all cops are racistBaden

    If you just want to repeat the same strawmen over and over, there's no need to reply to my posts. All cops are not racist, but some are. That's obvious and something every rational interlocutor here agrees on. Besides which, it has virtually no bearing on the existence of systemic racism, the topic of this discussion.

    What makes me suspicious is when people cling to the idea that certain ideas have been debunked. Sure, humans have a wide range of varying features, but some features only occur with certain other features. Genetic drift and kinship selection are real, natural processes.Harry Hindu

    What ideas do you think have been falsely debunked? What does it have to do with race? And what is your evidence for it? So far, you give the impression of being an ignoramus with regards to the issue of genetics and "race". So, now is your chance to prove you're not. Lay out in scientific terms exactly what you are trying to say. If you can't or won't, we'll be justified in drawing the conclusion you have no idea what you are talking about.
  • What are you listening to right now?


    Solid. Reminds me of good old ND.

  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    While I understand why people may fall for folk wisdom on race, what makes me suspicious is when they cling to it after it's been debunked. Race essentialism is built on such flimsy foundations, it can be utterly obliterated in a couple of simple 20-minute videos. And the existence of systemic racism can be established by looking at one or two studies. If you want to plant a flag somewhere, find some solid ground at least.
  • Bannings
    Well, I hope we still can discuss difficult topics.ssu

    I agree too and I don't think it's too hard to discuss difficult topics like race without using phrases like "black coon" or repeating a bunch of racially-loaded personal anecdotes of dubious veracity. We're not setting the bar very high with that, I think.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    :up:

    Below are just a couple of facts from a recent WAPO article relating to the US justice system, any of which in itself demonstrates the reality of systemic racism. You literally have to deny this empirical data exists (along with that forming the basis of hundreds of other peer-reviewed academic studies) to continue with the conspiracy theory that there is no systemic racism in the US:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-you-dont-believe-systemic-racism-is-real-explain-these-statistics/2020/06/12/ce0dff6e-acc7-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html

    [If you turn off javascript in Chrome you will permanently bypass the paywall, so definitely don't do that. :halo: ]

    E.g:

    1. "Police disproportionately stop African American drivers and disproportionately search African American drivers after stopping them, even though they tend to find less contraband."

    2. "African American men were about 2 1/2 times more likely than white men to be killed by police."

    3. "African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for petty crimes." Here's just one study demonstrating that "a black person more than 3 1/2 times more likely to be arrested for possession [of marijuana] than a white person, even though rates of usage are similar."

    https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform

    Of course, rather than bite the bullet on the above what you tend to get are red herrings and distractions to do with BLM or whatever. Again, systemic racism does not mean that all cops are racist or there are explicitly racist rules in place in government bureaucracies or that white people don't also suffer from the failings of certain systems. It does mean that certain systems function in a way (often despite explicit intent) to disfavour communities of colour. And all that is required to demonstrate that is data on the results of the functioning of these systems. And the data is there. Lots of it. Let's at least accept that and move on.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    "Racism has the power to hide and when it hides, it's kept safe."
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    Moved here as this is the thread focused on questioning the existence of systemic racism.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Reminder that this thread will be kept strictly on topic and low-quality posts will be deleted or moved. Thanks.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    The African Pygmies are black so they must be great basketball players. That's my essentialist logic and I'm sticking to it...
  • Honor Ethics


    :strong: :cheer:
  • Honor Ethics


    He constantly does that to me too. Let's beat the shit out of him. Hold me back!
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    Looking into it, turns out he eventually did disavow and was fired anyway. So, maybe it was unfair. But my capacity for caring about some millionaire footballer and his pathologically racist wife is kind of limited.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections


    It would be awful if he accidentally got pushed out of his helicopter while surveying one his golf courses or something. I don't think I'd be able to stand the injustice. :snicker:
  • Honor Ethics


    There are ways to maintain an honour culture while short-circuiting its negative effects. For example, on certain islands off the west coast of Ireland, the men (probably @Hanover's distant relatives) must threaten physical violence if insulted (which apparently happens quite often). However, they short-circuit the threat by calling for their friends and relatives to "hold them back". So, there's a sort of a dance of push and pull as they take their jacket off and run for whoever has insulted their honour while they shout the magic words and are dragged away from any physical contact with their adversary just quickly enough. Eventually, they are subdued and all is well again.

    So, it can work... With a bit of fiddling.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    I don't know if he was given a chance to disavow or not. I agree he should have been.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    (So maybe something unfair happened but "tyrannical" is hyperbole. Let's save "tyrannical" for a President who wants to literally kill people's families to punish them.)
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    I don't know the ins and outs so it depends. But if you say nothing that sounds like tacit approval. The way I would deal with it would be to contact the guy and tell him he better disavow and give him a chance to do so before getting fired. That would seem the fairest way to approach it to me.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    You're not very good at this, are you? Sometimes, I wonder if your real job is just to make Trump and his supporters look bad. If that's it, I commend you. Onward and upward...
  • Bannings


    Human nature. :scream:
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    Your position as a Trump supporter appears to be that censoring someone for what their family did is tyrannical, but murdering them is OK. My position is that some blowback (e.g. someone loses their job) is not necessarily tyrannical, but execution would be. That's the difference between a perfectly reasonable and consistent position (mine) and an utterly ridiculous one (yours). The only way out for you to be consistent is to condemn Trump as tyrannical. So, go ahead.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    There are probably hundreds of ways to expose your ridiculous levels of hypocrisy. Quoting Trump is just one.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    Take out their families — Donald Trump

    This guy must really be a scumbag then. But we can make the US less tyrannical by dumping him in November.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?


    Yes, but at least one of his examples isn't remotely accurate.

    What actually happened was:

    "Tea Katai made the posts on her Instagram story earlier this week, and the Galaxy angrily condemned them as "racist and violent" on Wednesday. The posts included a photo with a caption written in Serbian urging police to "kill" protesters, another referring to protesters as "disgusting cattle," and a third sharing a racist meme."
    Baden

    If your wife is an out-of-control racist calling for people to be killed, you better disavow that shit quickly or you can expect some blowback.
  • Bannings


    People not getting what they want and not being able to handle it. A self-destructive streak maybe? I'm not going to psychologize it more than that. Powers of self-restraint vary.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?


    Feel free to start your own thread about corporate censorship. I'm going to keep this strictly on topic as there is some interesting stuff being posted.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?


    As usual @NOS4A2 is just propagandising. Don't swallow the bait. Here's just one lie.

    Alexander Katai was dropped from the LA Galaxy because his wife commented “Black Nikes Matter” on an Instagram video of looting.NOS4A2

    What actually happened was:

    "Tea Katai made the posts on her Instagram story earlier this week, and the Galaxy angrily condemned them as "racist and violent" on Wednesday. The posts included a photo with a caption written in Serbian urging police to "kill" protesters, another referring to protesters as "disgusting cattle," and a third sharing a racist meme."

    By the way @NOS4A2 your random misleading complaints about leftists are off-topic. Go do it on the other systemic racism thread where that kind of thing is more tolerated.
  • Bannings
    Hardly a quicker route to exit than refusing moderation. I imagine he knew that and was engaged in a last hurrah.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Another useful explanatory link that helps explain why systemic racism is endemic in the US and how it's related to neoliberal economics.

    "As Lee Atwater, who became chairman of the Republican National Committee after helping elect Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, explained in a 1981 interview,

    Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously, maybe that’s part of it."

    The leftist "fantasy" straight from the mouth of a right-winger.

    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/09/neoliberal-capitalism-depends-white-supremacy?fbclid=IwAR0uElUsxC2TwUfSk6hRls3dg6GIWwxZMIH_yQVMv7lCMq5WOBf2vAFUMyI
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    According to the Kaiser Foundation, roughly a half million blacks are born each year in the United States.

    https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/births-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

    So, just as a place to start, let's say each new black person born gets a one million dollar life time voucher they can use for any educational experience which could boost their ability to earn. If I've done the math right (have I?) that comes to 500 billion dollars a year for the maximum cost of the program. Most people won't need that much, and many won't access the benefit, so the real price would probably be considerably less. How much less, I can't say.

    This is the kind of nuts and bolts analysis I'm seeking help with.

    The goal here is that we put our heads together and try to zero in on the cost of the benefit to the degree possible on a philosophy forum. It's not serious to throw out some lofty sounding idea if we don't have any idea what it would cost, and thus don't know how realistic it is.

    A key aspect of this proposal is that the richest 1% pay for it. Thus, when anyone complains about the cost of the plan 99% of the time we can respond with, "this doesn't affect you".

    But before we can claim the 1% can pay for this plan we need to know roughly how much it would cost, and roughly how much money the 1% have.
    Nuke
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    The following seems relevant enough to what to do about systemic racism to merit reposting here: (Any replies address to @Nuke)

    There's been a LOT of discussion of race relations in recent weeks, and as usual the vast majority of the discussion focuses on emotion and vague calls for various kinds of largely unspecified change. We are told we are supposed to take race relations very very seriously, which is good, but apparently not seriously enough to actually do anything big and specific about race relations problems.

    So, this thread will attempt to replace a pattern of vague emotional statements with a policy proposal which is both ambitious and specific.

    In the spirit of getting serious, let's try to do more than just fire off some opinions and on the spot analysis provided as fast as we can type. Read that sentence again please.

    Instead, I'm hoping you can help me nail down the price tag for the following proposal.

    PROPOSAL: Every black American and American Indian should be provided totally free education (tuition, books, living expenses, everything) for any educational experience which can boost their income earning potential. This plan should continue until such time as the vast wealth gap between these groups and whites is erased. The plan should be funded by the richest 1%, that is, those who have most of the money and who have benefited most from America's rigged system.

    Here are the kind of questions I hope we will address:

    1) How much would such a plan cost? How many people are we trying to serve and approximately how much money is required to serve them as defined above?

    2) What would the impact of such a plan be on the 1%? Would they barely notice? Would their economic position be crushed? How much money do they have, and how much of that would such a plan take from them?

    If you don't like this plan and would prefer another one, ok, no problem. In that case, please start your own thread outlining your own plan. Thank you.
    Nuke
  • @Baden
    Here's what I can do though, I've moved your original OP to the "What to do about systemic racism?" thread, which is more productive, and left the low-quality responses and insults behind in the other thread. If any of that is repeated in this thread, I'll delete it.

    (Please PM me (or @fdrake) with any further on this. Thanks.)
  • @Baden


    It's not against the rules to be disruptive and negative to a certain degree. Price we pay for open debate. It's also difficult to assess intention. Anyone who comes to a thread to deliberately disrupt it will be removed. But figuring out what's deliberate is the issue and if we're not careful on that we'll (understandably) be accused of heavy-handedness, bias etc.
  • @fdrake


    Your thread was being and would further have been colonised by the same disruptive and negative element that has colonised the other race threads and that sees all talk of race as a threat to be stamped out. Plus, these types of threads have been proliferating wildly over the past few days and we've had to do something about it. So, fair effort but unfortunately circumstances make this a fair mod decision too.