I would be putting words in someone's mouth if I wrote, "You said X..." when they did not say X, but rather something that I think (rightly or wrongly) implies X.
What I did is something different, but I agree that it's not obvious how this is conducive to productive and useful conversation. I know, it looks like I'm just trying to "score points." So, let me explain myself.
This kind of dialogue actually is productive and useful.
People reading my comment who were taken by a logical fallacy (including the person who wrote it) get to see that and learn something.
The person who wrote my comment (me) gets to practice writing clearly and concisely, and will get instant feedback if there was a failure or mistake. (Either in exposition or logic - and I readily admit I make logical mistakes all the time.)
As further evidence that what I said is useful, I submit that I have a double digit number of upvotes.
I wish there had been a way to indicate I wasn't just being snarky/trying to score points, but it's hard to convey that online, short of saying "BTW, I'm not just being snarky here, I actually think this is important." Maybe I should have done that. I'm open to suggestions here.
You could have conveyed the non-snark by just omitting your parenthetical. Everything before that is totally valid, but the parenthetical invites the kind of reply that doesn't actually move the conversation in the way I think you intended.
(Edit, adding): Also, when you use "", it's much better if you are actually quoting. If not, you are putting words in their mouth.
If I had just not put the parenthetical, it would make it look like I was "really asking" the question. That would treat the derivation in question as potentially legitimate (it's really not), and also invite serious but non-useful responses.
So that leads me to conclude that I just shouldn't have phrased my point as a question in the first place. I could have just stated my point as a statement, not a question.
That's pretty much what I was trying to say with, "What is the point of even asking a question that you're sure you already know the answer to?"
I guess you were trying for a rhetorical question, but I think that requires either:
1. The answer to be obvious to everybody, both asker and audience. E.g. "Do we really want to destroy all life?"
2. The question to be a lead-in to a discussion or argument. E.g. "Is it better to have more blue cars available for consumers to buy? I think so, and here's why."
You didn't do #2, so it looked like #1, but in context that's horribly dismissive.
I'm tired of people misusing the concept of a strawman (or other equivalent concepts). Just because someone pointed out something weird or bad about an argument doesn't make it a strawman.
The OP comment was not misrepresented. He started from "black people historically lived in greater proportion where soil was good for cotton." He ended with "affirmative action is still needed". Yes, the OP said more than that, but those statements as given are correct.
I don't know where you're getting any of this. My objection was to asking the question and then assuming that it could not be answered before even giving the other guy a chance to respond.
The proper way is "patterns ingrained tens, hundreds, thousands of years ago can show tangible effects even in 2012" to "the concept of affirmative action is sound".
The historic chinatowns of San Francisco, New York, and LA are still predominantly populated with ethnic Chinese. At a bigger scale: China is still predominantly populated with ethnic Chinese.
I'm not sure what conclusions you can reasonably draw from this, especially WRT affirmative action.
Ethnic Chinese in China were not subject to systematic oppression like blacks in the USA not even a century ago. That is a pattern, and it has far reaching effects.
Odd that you didn't mention the systematic oppression of Chinese in the USA. However, that's beside the point.
My point is that whatever the far-reaching effects of slavery, it's not clear that this specific geographic distribution is one of them - many cultures tend to clump together naturally even without systematic oppression (see: american expat communities around the world). Slavery may have chosen the original location, but isn't necessarily what's keeping people there.
He mentioned that ethnic Chinese in China were not subject to systematic oppression (which is debatable, especially depending on your definition of "ethnic Chinese", it's a big country).
I think the point he's making is that the same areas which were populated by black slaves under systematic oppression 150 years ago were populated by poor blacks under systematic discrimination 50 years ago and are populated by poor blacks today. To me that's a clear pattern that deserves to be corrected.
To me that's a clear pattern that deserves to be corrected.
While there is a damnable travesty present, it's not clear to anyone what the pattern is or how to correct it. Many other poor places have gotten rich; many ethnic enclaves thrive. It's an absurd stretch to look at this chart and draw any conclusion whatsoever about the merit of Affirmative Action.
For example, you haven't addressed whether it's worth trying to undo bad things that happened long ago with other injustices, as opposed to simply being just from here on out.
For another example, you haven't addressed whether it actually works or not.
(Those two examples actually are related, because theory and practice actually are related, but I digress :) )
> undo bad things that happened long ago with other injustices
First, you are implying that affirmative action is unjust, which it is not. Affirmative action does not mean that an unqualified worker replaces a qualified worker because of race. Affirmative action means that equally qualified workers are then selected to be as representative of the population as possible. This has the added benefit of making sure civil servants (ie our government) are more accurately representing the dynamics of the population as a whole.
Whether it actually works is a difficult question, and I've only done a little bit of reading on the issue (I have friends who are activists and explained the details to me, but I wasn't able to commit a lot of the specific details and studies to memory). A summary: it's complicated, there's pros and cons, but the pros can outweigh the cons depending on implementation. A quick Google search reveals a few interesting things. A study from Princeton indicated that ending affirmative action would result in a sharp decline in minority students, but it wouldn't actually raise the acceptance rate for non-minority students significantly. But there are also some studies that indicate the opposite (an analysis of law schools, for example, revealed that there would potentially be more black lawyers if affirmative action was not in place).
As always, make the evaluation for yourself, but asking someone to validate affirmative action on HN is quite a task, isn't it? But to reframe the discussion a little bit: it's not a question of whether it's just or fair -- it's a question of whether it's an effective approach to inequality. The idea of "reverse racism" is baloney, and I can explain that opinion further if necessary.
"Affirmative action means that equally qualified workers are then selected to be as representative of the population as possible."
Maybe this is what Affirmative Action means to you, but not to everyone. In fact, the University of Texas is currently at court regarding this very issue, where the university intentionally admitted minority students at the expense of white students who were otherwise better qualified in order to meet vague race quotas.
This is certainly tricky, and obviously a judge is the one to make the final decision for the US, but I'll stick by my interpretation of the Civil Rights Act for now :-)
Obviously, there is always the problem of having a profession where the demand hasn't been met by the supply of skilled workers (like programming!) which takes time before it balances a bit more, and this is where the idea of racial quotas breaks down considerably.
>The idea of "reverse racism" is baloney, and I can explain that opinion further if necessary.
I'd be interested in that explanation. Combatting discrimination by allowing discrimination by or for minorities seems like pushing the pendulum too far back in the other direction.
Isn't the idea equality? Having everyone playing by the same rules regardless of race?
Example (in my own home state, no less) For jobs offered on native lands, the advertisements are allowed to say "Indian preference applies" - which means exactly what it sounds like. Isn't this wrong on a number of levels?
You cannot create institutional and systemic racism against white people. White is the cultural norm in the US: everything is default to white perspective and whiteness is considered the most desireable state. Even if a minority treats an individual white person badly, that white person can typically walk away from that encounter without being affected, nor have that sentiment compounded by society at large every day of their life. Furthermore, policies like affirmative action recognize how badly minorities have been treated both historically and today, so the policy attempts to make a (small) correction for that imbalance.
> Isn't the idea equality? Having everyone playing by the same rules regardless of race?
Yes, but the rules are not evenly applied. People of color are disproportionately affected by the economic and political systems of the US. We live in a state of unfair treatment for people of color right now, eliminating things like affirmative action will not change that reality.
> Example (in my own home state, no less) For jobs offered on native lands, the advertisements are allowed to say "Indian preference applies" - which means exactly what it sounds like. Isn't this wrong on a number of levels?
The only thing wrong here is your sentiment. It is really clear you have no idea how badly native peoples in the US are treated. Native people are much more often victims of violent crime. Most native populations have been wiped out by colonial settlers, and those that survived have been forced from their homelands. Native territories are forbidden from prosecuting criminals under their own laws, leaving them unable to provide legal protection against violent crimes. Racist attitudes towards native peoples are extremely prevalent and popular culture constantly attempts to assimilate native culture as a perpetuation of the colonial settler genocide of native peoples. Giving a native person a job is the least US society could do, when it should be doing things like returning stolen lands and providing permanent economic support for those native nations that still exist.
>..that white person can typically walk away from that encounter without being affected
Meaning, what? I'm not "affected" because I have to deal with someone who, say, hates white people?
>Yes, but the rules are not evenly applied.
Aha. Sounds like the problem is here. The laws we have need to be applied correctly, instead of inventing new and questionable ones.
>The only thing wrong here is your sentiment.
Any "sentiment" you see is purely of your own invention. I mentioned a fact (namely an ad in a newspaper), and asked how that is not wrong. Discrimination is wrong, regardless of the race of the person doing it.
Put another way, the cure to discrimination is not more discrimination, and it's frankly idiotic to assume that it is.
I'm beginning to think race discussions are becoming the new religious discussions. People are incapable of discussing it without moralizing, preaching, or talking down.
> Meaning, what? I'm not "affected" because I have to deal with someone who, say, hates white people?
The problem is mainly that a white person only needs to deal with racism on a personal level, and this racism is easy to ignore and "walk away" from.
A black person or latino has to not only deal with racism from individual people, but also inequities that are the result of our society. What are these inequities?
Here's a list of some:
- lower representation in government
- stereotyping in movies and popular culture
- lower representation in institutions of higher education
- lower representation in the workforce
- more difficulty growing and getting promoted once hired
- assumption that he or she might be residing illegally (this applies mainly to latinos)
Now you might say, "but what if blacks and latinos just aren't suitable for our government, educational institutions, workforce, and popular culture?" Or "what if they just don't want to participate?"
So now the real question becomes, "so how do you encourage them to participate? Or would you prefer to be a society that deliberately ignores a portion of its population?"
And this isn't even mentioning the fact that children don't get to chose where they grow up, who their parents are, and what the color of their skin is. I'm very happy that I didn't grow up black in Compton, and I'm sure you would also feel the same.
We are a byproduct of our surroundings, and until we can eliminate the gang violence, substance abuse, etc. etc. that surrounds a lot of children (predominantly minorities), it seems that the best we can do is lower the barrier to entry for "a different life." Which part of that is racist against white people?
>Now you might say, "but what if blacks and latinos just aren't suitable for our government, educational institutions, workforce, and popular culture?"
Except I wouldn't say that, because first, it doesn't make any damn sense, and second, it's the kind of ignorant tripe you'd expect to hear a white supremacist say.
Ah, my bad -- the sentence was phrased a bit poorly. By "suitable" I meant "good for the job" -- ie there may not be a large enough pool of talent available to fill necessary roles appropriately. There's a common argument that, "maybe they just don't want the jobs" adequately explains and justifies the situation. I didn't mean it personally in any way, nor did I mean that your position automatically includes that kind of an opinion :-)
shantanubala did a good job talking about some of your points, so I don't have any thing particular to add. However, the fact that you see something wrong with providing help in finding employment for native people speaks volumes about how you feel about native peoples with regard to how they interact in US society. You call decisions that include race as a factor as discrimination, but that ignores the long legacy and reality of discriminatory policies and social norms in the US as they relate to people of color.
> I'm beginning to think race discussions are becoming the new religious discussions. People are incapable of discussing it without moralizing, preaching, or talking down.
That you yourself took a position to defend normative ideas that actively perpetuate real, actual violence and harm is a sign you yourself, whether you realize it or not, have taken a position of talking down and over the actual experiences of people of color. The reason why people take race discussion seriously is because for people of color these things are not just discussions, but the real existence they face every single day.
>However, the fact that you see something wrong with providing help in finding employment for native people
I didn't say this. I said that stating a racial preference in an employment advertisement is wrong and discriminatory regardless of the noble aims of the reasons those ads exist.
>That you yourself took a position to defend normative ideas that actively perpetuate real, actual violence and harm
What the actual fuck are you talking about?! Saying that all discrimination is wrong perpetuates violence and harm?? Explain yourself, please. I don't appreciate being tarred with the racist brush for trying to comprehend this.
Well, you directly said you found racial preference for native people in job ads is "wrong on a number of levels" (originally phrased as a rhetorical question). But we know that native people suffer in a systemic way in US society, so they do need targeted help and policies on the basis of race in order to allow them to have the equal participation in society they deserve (and to help them not be disproportionately affected by violent crimes).
Institutional racism isn't just about discrimination, but rather prejudice combined with power. This isn't just about attitudes alone, as we are talking about real policies and incidents that are a direct reflection of racist attitudes. This instance of a job ad with a stated preference for native peoples is discriminatory, yes, but that is wholly acceptable given the state the US and its policies have put native peoples in.
The notion that affirmative action is racist or unfairly discriminatory is a perpetuation of the current racist institutions in the US. It supposes that the experience of people of color is not valid, and that their experiences and lives do not need nor deserve any consideration, ignoring the institutional oppressions that effect them. In the absence of targeted programs to help people affected by institutional racism, that kind of structural oppression thrives.
> Saying that all discrimination is wrong perpetuates violence and harm??
Your message isn't just that all discrimination is wrong. You quite clearly took aim at the behavior of and policies directed towards minorities as wrong or unjust. This ignores the main point: the behavior and policies of the majority have been wrong and unjust, and small programs and policies to help start to correct this are totally and wholly appropriate. This isn't about treating the majority (read: white) population unfairly, but looking at the numbers, seeing how the policies, laws, and enforcement of laws supported by that majority have negatively affected people of color at rates much higher than whites, and taking action to begin to address that.
You scoff at a job ad mentioning they give a preference native applicants, but are thinking about the long history of blood and violence that has occurred and continues to occur to those people? Of course they deserve a better shot at a job (not too mention they deserve much more). The notion of unfair discrimination towards whites as a result of affirmative action policies for jobs and education is a false equivalence.
>This instance of a job ad with a stated preference for native peoples is discriminatory, yes, but that is wholly acceptable given the state the US and its policies have put native peoples in.
You agree that it's discrimination. Finally.
So discrimination is okay in certain circumstances.
.. I find that hard to accept. Again, you're proposing that the answer for discrimination is more discrimination. What does violent crime and equal participation in society that you keep bringing up have to do with allowing one group to do something we don't allow any other group to do?
What does allowing this accomplish that enforcing the existing equality laws does not? (Referring to EEO and EEH acts, if they are applied like they should be?) Legally, how does this not fall afoul of the equal protection laws as defined in the constitution?
On a more practical level, wouldn't it be more beneficial for everyone involved (the employeer, the employee, society at large) for someone hiring for a position to choose the most qualified person for the job rather than selecting explictly for racial background?
>Your message isn't just that all discrimination is wrong. You quite clearly took aim at the behavior of and policies directed towards minorities as wrong or unjust.
That is my message, and whatever other subtext you choose to read into it is entirely between you and your keyboard. Knock it off.
I don't feel particularly discriminated against here, so I hardly have a dog in this hunt. I don't like how I'm not allowed to question a discriminatory law without being presumed racist. Basically pointing and asking "WTF?" is what I'm doing here.
> So discrimination is okay in certain circumstances.
Yes absolutely, we discriminate all the time and discrimination is a morally neutral thing. I think you are mostly speaking about racial discrimination, because most people most certainly support discrimination for, say, a choice between skilled and unskilled people when hiring for a particular job role.
> What does violent crime and equal participation in society that you keep bringing up have to do with allowing one group to do something we don't allow any other group to do?
Well, as a society we DO allow some groups to do things that other groups do not. A lot of basic human rights revolve around letting people do things that some group of others do not, for example attending particular religious service. Again, I think you are getting at that we as a society do not allow racist discrimination in our society due to the harms that come from racism.
> What does allowing this accomplish that enforcing the existing equality laws does not? (Referring to EEO and EEH acts, if they are applied like they should be?) Legally, how does this not fall afoul of the equal protection laws as defined in the constitution?
I do not know much about the EEO and EEH programs you mention, so I can't really comment on those specific things. However, there is a great body of evidence that shows right now, in our current legal framework, there are racial injustices and disparities. For new legislation and policies, then question then becomes can this inequality be addressed through the law, and if so how. How any given program or policy interacts with equal protection under the law isn't an answering question without more specific questions about policy, as in the US the legal system and Supreme Court have both accepted and rejected laws and programs that do seek to fix racial inequality. To date, though, affirmative action programs have been found to be valid within certain criteria, so the allowed existence of such programs is not in question here.
> On a more practical level, wouldn't it be more beneficial for everyone involved (the employeer, the employee, society at large) for someone hiring for a position to choose the most qualified person for the job rather than selecting explictly for racial background?
It is a common misconception that affirmative action programs mean that unqualified people will be hired or admitted to an educational institution. Generally such programs include race as a factor when comparing alike, qualified candidates. How exactly these processes work will depend on specific programs, some of which have been found to not be legal in the US and were struck down (but affirmative action itself remains legal and valid). Further, there is a large cost to societies that keep populations based on race, age, disability, and economic class suppressed or excluded from education, jobs, equal legal protection, and personal integrity (among other things), so policies that can address those societal problems do have a measurable benefit.
Lastly, I meant to say that you were presenting the notion that policies that benefit minorities were wrong and unjust by questioning the need for those policies: that says to me that you either aren't familiar with the data about this or that you are familiar with that data and still don't believe it and would prefer a world without policies that help addressed our most fundamental inequalities as a society. This is my last post on this, if you would like to learn more, there are far better sources than I a Google search away.
> First, you are implying that affirmative action is unjust, which it is not. Affirmative action does not mean that an unqualified worker replaces a qualified worker because of race. Affirmative action means that equally qualified workers are then selected to be as representative of the population as possible.
I've never heard of that idea (which means it's interesting, not wrong). But, I also think it's wrong. For example, at my university, where a pretty small proportion of applicants actually get in (it's highly competitive), you can't get a sizeable proportion of blacks using the method you suggest. You have to use the method that you don't suggest, which is what they do.
I appreciate your referencing actual reasearch. I think there are tangible but non-quantifiable effects that are not measured by that kind of thing, though.
For example, people know that affirmative action (as I have seen it practiced) is ubiquitous and unfair, and that in itself makes it harder for prejudices to be dissolved.
This even applies to the people who are supposed to directly benefit from affirmative action.
> For example, you haven't addressed whether it's worth trying to undo bad things that happened long ago...
Um, I hate to break it to you, but racism didn't magically end "long ago", but is alive and well today and is both personal and systemic in western society.
>...with other injustices
Providing help in getting people of color who are actively prohibited from accessing higher education is not an injustice.
(The answer is, you don't.)