Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
Once again everybody makes the inexcusable error of trying to argue with my general point by quibbling with my examples. It is completely irrelevant if I picked bad ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melkerson
If this keeps happening, which it sounds like it does, maybe it's time to consider that it's a "you problem" and not an "everybody problem".
I agree with Melkerson, and I don't think the examples you choose are irrelevant, although I also don't really think my disagreement with your OP is about your examples. But, just as a general rule, a higher quality OP will generate higher quality responses. I don't think you should expect a high level of thought from others if you don't put a high level of thought into your own OPs.
As corollary to that, you picked a potentially pretty contentious topic and chose to frame it in a way that would make it more provocative, i.e. your framing is that sometimes racism/sexism are critical. So I think if you're going to be very provocative you ought to be even more careful about picking your examples and making your argument clear, so that you don't seem to be defending things that almost everyone agrees are problematic.
That said, here's my disagreement with the OP. I think one of the premises is wrong. You seem to be assuming that any disproportionality in representation in a job is racist or sexist. That's not generally how employment discrimination is understood. For example, to successfully sue an employer under federal law for "disparate impact" employment discrimination you have to do more than establish a disparity. You have to show that the disparate impact is unnecessary to the job (cf.
EEOC).
I think it's unhelpful to conflate more structural issues of racial (or gender) inequality reflected in statistical differences (though those are certainly related to problems with racism and sexism) with directly racist or sexist discrimination in the way you are, because your framing suggests that "some racism or sexism is good". But I think you're just misunderstanding what racism and sexism are. So the simple answer to the OP is that your examples are not actually examples of problematic discrimination and so it's better not to frame them as examples where racism and sexism are necessary.
Last edited by well named; 04-27-2019 at 12:05 PM.